


A Change in Energy (The Force over Distance Remix Project)

by kvikindi



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Universe
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Coming Out, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Psychic Bond, Suicidal Thoughts, posthumanism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-02-09 18:08:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 74
Words: 457,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12893790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kvikindi/pseuds/kvikindi
Summary: A remix of cleanwhiteroom's Force over Distance (which it's not necessary to have read).Rush gets psychically linked to Destiny. And to Young.





	1. Prologue

Rush is afraid.

He is running and he feels like he has always been running. In this time, now, here, this moment, racing down the dark and indistinguishable corridors of Destiny (which have, increasingly, colonized his dreams— his brain untethering what’s irrelevant or what he prefers not to remember, or compressing it into inaccessible compartments), he wonders if the place to which he is now running is in fact the place to which he’s always been running— not on the physical level, but certainly on the metaphorical, where he has always been running in less obvious ways. Perhaps it was and perhaps it was absurd to ever think he could avoid this arrival. Somewhere, he imagines, Destiny laughs.

Except that Destiny does not laugh because Destiny has been boarded; that is why he is running; the pitch and roll of ships in battle, the shields failing, the soundless light of explosions in space, and though he does not yet know by whom Destiny has been boarded in the purely objective sense, at the same time he _knows_ and Destiny knows, he suspects, or he knows although he does not like this knowledge because there is no mechanism to explain it. When he skids around a corner he touches a wall with a bare hand and he knows that Destiny is afraid, and that she does not like their presence, and this is true for him also. Their thoughts cause him pain.

This pain is useful, though, because with it he knows when they are coming and backtracks, sliding frantically against the walls with no escape as his head turns inside out with the alien torque of their brainwaves. That is when she finally speaks to him, and by she he means Destiny but also Gloria or possibly some Gloria-Destiny hybrid because he finds the inputs confusing and he cannot always remember to whom he’s speaking when he speaks to her.

“Nick,” she whispers urgently.

She is standing inside a recess in the wall. She is wearing a loose white jumper and her fair hair is disheveled. He cannot think how he is supposed to respond to this apparition until she beckons him and says, “In here!”

So he goes to her and a hidden door slides shut to conceal them, and then they are standing face to face together, very close to one another in this very small space. Like they are two children playing a game of hide-and-seek from others. Any minute now she will rumple his hair, which he pretends to hate, and laugh the husky laugh by which he would know her blindfolded. Any minute now. Any minute.

Out in the corridor, a group of the nameless spindly-limbed aliens pass, whisper-footed along the deck plating.

He is looking at Gloria and he is on Destiny and he can sense the painful thoughts of these intruders, and he presses a trembling hand to his forehead but there is no relief from it.

"I'm not sure if you're real," he whispers.

He hadn’t seen her for months until she had shown up this evening on the bridge. 

No one else can see her. But then his life is constructed of things that no one sees except for him. Answers, equations, agonies that go unexpressed and therefore perhaps unformed, not even nascent only potential and therefore nonexistent, and this is what it means to be an outlier, and so how are you supposed to know? How are you supposed to tell? What is reality but the iceberg-tip of a Gaussian distribution and if he is below the waterline then how can he—

"I am real," she says, with a small smile that is meant to be reassuring. "I always have been."

"But you're not Gloria," he says. Absurd, because of course she is not Gloria. Gloria is dead and Gloria is dead and Gloria is—

"No," she says. "Not Gloria."

"And you want something from me."

She studies him, her mouth closed and tense. "You know what it is I want," she says. "You have always known what I wanted."

"I won't. I _can't_."

"You have done so before. Almost. You were so close."

"I had an application-layer firewall."

"Yes," she says.

He had a firewall, when he sat in the interface chair. He dreamed— he dreamed Destiny and he dreamed California in the springtime and he dreamed the crisp white sheets and Gloria beside him in bed and she wept in the corridor and he knew it was not real but still he wanted to wrench the bones out of his body as though he could find the place where it was hurting and pull it out and leave the rest of him and maybe that would be enough, maybe he could go on functioning, maybe he should have done that when it had been something more than a technological dream and maybe he  _had_ done that, hadn't he? hadn't he tried? But he had not gone far enough. Maybe this is the chance. Maybe this is what he needs.

“What happened to Dr. Franklin?” he asks. "When he sat in the chair?"

Gloria— not Gloria Destiny the AI this image pulled from out of the depths of his brain— looks away. “He was not an excellent candidate for the use of the neural interface,” she says. “He did not have an application-layer firewall.”

“I don’t—” Rush says. He closes his eyes. The cognitive dissonance is having an adverse effect on him. “I won’t have an application-layer firewall either. Not this time.”

She bites her lip. "It is not my goal to hurt you."

He says nothing.

She says with a note of desperation, "Nicholas. You must do this. Please. They are hurting me, Nick."

He puts the heels of his hands up to his eyes because he is having an emotional reaction and that is not optimal in the current situation. He has to  _evaluate_. He has to  _prioritize_. He has to  _calculate_ a course like threading the ship between hazards except that of course it is never Scylla  _or_ Charybdis, because this is real life and in real life you must pick one or the other, the one you think you can survive, the one whose net harm is potentially less, but for whom? For whom? Isn't that the bitch of the calculation?

When he opens his eyes Gloria has vanished. But he knows where she is. He knows where she will wait for him. So he edges out of the wall and he turns the corner and picks up his pace and soon he is there, of course, the only _there_ that matters, the neural interface room with its waiting chair.

The AI too is there waiting. It watches as he seals the door and rapidly disables the entry mechanism.

“Nick,” she says softly. “Unlike Dr. Franklin, _you_ are an excellent candidate.”

He does not know exactly what she means by that statement but at the same time he knows or he can guess. He does not want to, _cannot_ think about it at this precise moment. That will _certainly_ have an adverse effect.

Instead he goes to the monitor bank and scans through the local cache of programs, looking for something that can serve as a barrier between his mind and Destiny. He does not expect to find such a thing, but it buys him the space of a few breaths to complete his analysis of the situation.

“Nick, what are you doing?” she asks, her voice growing slightly frantic. “Why are you stalling? We have no time for this!”

She is afraid. He had known she was.

Several options exist that might shield his mind— firewalls, buffers— but all of them would take time to configure, and even if this were not the case, all of them cut him off from too much of the CPU to be effective. He requires full access if he is going to retake the ship on his own. He will need to be in too many systems.

Doors must come open.

They must be vented into space.

“They are attempting to disable the FTL drive!” Gloria says, or rather begs.

He looks at the interface chair. It is rather unassuming, considering the nature of what it is.

 _Go,_ Young had said once. _Sit. Be my guest._

He wonders what Young is doing now. Probably something loud and unproductive that involves an assault rifle.

“Nick,” Gloria says. “They will disable the drive. I cannot prevent it!”

Can he believe her, is the question. She is _not_ Gloria. Therefore she is already deceptive in a sense. He does not know the rate of similarity between her goals and his goals. She wants an apposition of their minds without the firewall. She wants access through every cognitive port he possesses. She has always wanted this. As a goal it is not strictly good or bad, but merely as is the nature of most goals something difficult, unpredictable, and costly.

That’s what she wants.

And perhaps he wants that too.

He is not in that habit of assessing his wants. He knows only that this is the place to which he's been running.

“Can _you_ act as my firewall?” he asks.

“...Yes,” she says after a hesitation. Her voice is flat. 

“ _Will_ you? Just this once?”

They face each other in the small, dark, humming room. She looks at him through Gloria’s now-emotionless features. She is Destiny now and not Gloria, who was not emotionless, who cried easily and played the violin with such feeling that you could not believe that the wood and glue didn't rip themselves apart under her fingers, who once threw a glass a wine at him during an argument at Oxford, but he did not mind, because he admired the artistic temperament, and because everyone said how like chalk and cheese they were, Nick and Gloria, and he had thought, At last, here is what I’m missing, my other half.

This is not Gloria.

She says, “Just this once. But only just this once. If I do this, then the next time you will...?"

As though she knows already that this will not be the last time he sits in the chair.

There is a familiarity to that sensation. Other people thinking they know better than he does.

"Yes," he says. "You can have what you want. Then."

There is a familiarity, also, to this deal. This leveraging. But it is the only deal he knows how to make. The only leverage he has.

And he is so tired. He has been running forever.

He rounds the monitor bank, his eyes fixed on the chair. He feels, for a moment, a thrill of trepidation.

He turns.

He sits.

Just before the bolts engage, he smells something like lightning in the air.


	2. Chapter 2

Young was looking for Rush.

This was not a novel experience. By his reckoning, approximately 50% of his time aboard the Destiny had been spent in some state of looking for Rush. The man was a goddamn escape artist. Rush would probably have taken that as a compliment, but Young had never understood what was so great about the ability to contort your way out of absurd tortures you’d created for yourself. That was what escape artists did— they locked themselves up in boxes full of water just to prove that they could break free whenever they wanted, and most of the time it seemed like that was what Rush did, too. Except with Rush, it could be anything from an actual box full of water to some mildly irritating bureaucratic task he was responsible for.

Maybe that wasn’t fair. Rush hadn’t locked himself in that box full of water. If anything, it had been Young’s fault, though Young couldn’t not still see it as a consequence of Rush’s own actions, the fallout from his poorly-thought-out master plot.

Maybe that wasn’t fair, either. He had to admit that about 20% of his time aboard the Destiny had been spent trying to get rid of Rush. Where that left him, he didn’t know— except with a 70%-Rush-centered lifestyle, a sense of existential confusion, and a headache that wouldn’t quit.

He’d tried looking in the mess, though he’d already guessed that Rush wouldn’t be there. Most of the time, Rush seemed to live on air. Young had tried to sell him on the value of shared meal times as social bonding mechanism, and how that was necessary in a closed community like the ship, but Rush had looked at him like he couldn’t believe the shit that was coming out of his mouth. “Please provide advance warning before we reach the stage of fraternity hazing, fox hunting, or matching tattoos,” he’d said.

Young had a tattoo. It was the 552nd Spec Ops Squadron emblem. He and his buddies had gotten matching ones done in a little place with bad lighting right outside Clovis. He didn’t tell Rush that. But Rush looked at him like he just _knew_.

So he wasn’t that sympathetic to Rush whenever Rush did show up to dinner and almost inevitably ended up sitting alone, hunched over his bowl of rehydrated protein with his hair half-obscuring his hostile eyes. Or when Rush didn’t show up and people spent the whole time talking about him, which was more or less what they’d been doing tonight. Eli had been on some tangent about how Destiny (Eli called the ship Destiny, just Destiny, like it was a person, which was something he’d picked up from Rush) _liked_ Rush, and Greer had said, “Naw, it doesn’t. You know how I know? Because _no one_ likes that man.”

Young had let it go, and moved on. But it was hard to conduct a shipwide search when your knee had twenty stitches in it and you were working with a couple of busted ribs.

The alien incursion four days ago hadn’t gone great for anyone, except maybe for Rush, who’d disobeyed a direct order, kicked Young in the face, sat in the neural interface chair— _without a firewall—_ and somehow managed to save their collective ass by firing the main weapon, trapping the intruders and venting atmosphere out of their compartments. And was he so much as bruised? The hell he was. Just those little marks on his temples, almost invisible, where the chair’s bolts had made contact.

That was why Young was looking for him— the chair, the goddamn _chair,_ and the fact that Rush refused to answer how he’d known that it wouldn’t scramble his brain (“Just lucky, I suppose— I didn’t have much to lose at that point, now did I?”) or how he’d known he would be able to wire himself into the weapon and the sensors (“Tactically, it’s always made sense”) or anything, really, about what had happened. He’d been dodging Young for days, probably because he was a pretty lousy liar, much worse than someone who lied almost constantly should be. He knew _exactly_ why the chair hadn’t hurt him, and Young would bet he’d been damn sure it wouldn’t, and that he was holding out on a lot more, a _lot more_ information about the ship.

Young was heading to the bridge, but he took a left onto the observation deck, figuring it wouldn’t hurt to take a minute and rest his leg. He sat down on the small bench, wincing— _God_ , the knee was a bitch of a joint— and stared out at the solid dark length of the ship, cutting its way through the stars as though they were water.

He couldn’t stop thinking about how Rush had known.

There’d been a moment on the bridge, just before they were boarded, when he’d turned to Rush to find him still. That wasn’t like Rush, first of all— just try making him stay in one place. He had seemed distracted, staring at empty air with a curious focus, as though he were watching or listening to something that wasn’t there. That was right before he first tried to make a break for the chair room, without bothering to spare anyone a single explanatory word, and Young had shoved him back.

“Let me _go!_ ” Rush had said, and Young had said, “Nobody’s going anywhere. Do you get that? _Nobody’s leaving_.” Then the alien ship had hit them hard, sending everyone flying, and in the chaos, Rush and Young had grappled on the floor: Rush kicking and clawing and scratching as Young tried to hold him, till finally he went for Young’s weakest spot, driving a foot into his just-broken ribs. Then the fight was over, and Rush was running for the hallway.

The door to the bridge had opened at his approach, as though in anticipation.

Young shut his eyes against the deck’s stream of blurry starlight. “What are you up to?” he breathed aloud.

He wasn’t sure if he was talking to the absent Rush, or to the silent bulk of the ship.

* * *

When at last he made it to the bridge, it was to find that Rush wasn’t there either.

“Hey,” Brody said, looking up from where he was seated in the command chair, studying displays. “How’s the leg?”

“Better,” Young said shortly. He hated that he was limping— that it was such a visible injury. He was worried that it made him look weak. Ever since the would-be mutiny early in their time on the Destiny, he’d been hyper-conscious of anything that might undermine his command. They were in a better place now, he thought— at least, he was pretty sure no one was actively plotting to overthrow him, except maybe for Rush, who had never really stopped— but some knee-jerk fear remained, a sense that he was hanging on by the tips of his fingers. “Have you seen—“ he started to ask.

Brody preempted him. “Yeah, no, he’s not here.”

“I don’t think he likes us,” Volker chimed in, not looking up from his monitor.

“He likes us,” Park said from the far corner. “I mean—“ Her voice wasn’t completely certain. “In his way.”

Young sighed and pulled out his radio. “Rush, this is Young. Come in.”

He should have just done this in the first place, really, but he had a feeling he knew how Rush was going to respond.

And, predictably, there was a long silence before Rush answered, in a flat tone, “Rush here.”

“Lucky you,” Volker said under his breath. “He doesn’t pick up for us.”

“Rush here,” Rush said again, sounding halfway between bored and furious.

“Where are you right now?” Young asked.

“Control interface room.”

“I thought you were supposed to be repairing the weapons array with the rest of the science team.”

There was no answer. Young waited a good minute and a half. He rubbed a hand over his face, feeling incredibly weary.

“Rush,” he said again.

Across the room, a dark bank of monitors suddenly lit up in shades of brilliant gold and blue. Images flickered across the screens as machinery hummed into action.

“Welp,” Brody said with a fatalistic shrug.

“Is that what I think it is?” Young asked.

Park had moved to the newly lit consoles. “Looks like primary and secondary weapons arrays are back online. No— wait. All three arrays are up. Everything except the main weapon. Power flow is stable.”

“I wish he would explain how he _does_ this stuff,” Volker said.

“You guys had nothing to do with this?” Young felt his headache intensify.

“Nope.”

Young picked up the radio. “ _Rush_ ,” he said, unable to keep the frustration out of his voice.

A pause.

“You’re welcome,” Rush said shortly. “Rush out.”

“He’s been in a bad mood all day,” Park said apologetically, still scanning through the weapons consoles.

“Yeah,” Volker muttered. “Because he’s so charming the rest of the time.”

Young stowed his radio. “I’ll talk to him,” he said.

At least he knew where Rush was now. He made his way to the control interface room, wishing in hindsight that he’d just picked up the damn radio in the first place, and risked Rush’s irritation rather than wandering all over the ship. His knee was killing him, and he really just wanted a nap and some aspirin. But the thing with Rush was that you had to keep after him. Otherwise, he thought he was getting away with it, and would move on to whatever his next insane stratagem was, and then you’d have to waste your time on that, and then he _would_ get away with it, because there just weren’t enough hours in the day.

When he reached the CI room, he saw that it was mostly dark. The only light came from the consoles, a gold-and-bluish underwater sort of glowing that reminded him of aquariums back home. Rush was perched in front of the main interface, leant forward, his dark eyes flickering across the screens and his left hand rubbing at the back of his neck.

Young stood in the doorway for a while, watching him without saying anything. There was a sort of peacefulness to the dark, although Rush himself didn’t look very peaceful.

“You missed dinner,” he said at last. “Again."

Rush didn’t react. So maybe he had known Young was watching.

“I wasn’t aware that you were keeping tabs on me,” Rush said. “Again.”

“Nice work with the weapons array, although your team’s a little tired of being sidelined.”

“This is not a training program. If and when their help is required, I’ll ask for it.”

“Right,” Young said. He leaned against the doorway, trying to seem casual. “How’s the main weapon coming?”

“It’s not looking promising. It was always designed to be used in conjunction with the chair.” Without seeming cognizant that he was doing it, Rush brought one hand up to his temple, touching the small scar that the neural bolt had left.

“You’ve used it without the chair before,” Young pointed out. “You unlocked the firing mechanism months ago.”

“That was only a workaround,” Rush said. “When I fired the weapon from the chair, it reset the system.” There was something a little too smooth in his tone. He wasn’t looking at Young.

“Is that what happened,” Young said.

“That’s what happened.”

“So why can’t you just make another workaround?”

Rush slammed his hands against the edge of the console. “Oh, absolutely. Let me just crack and dismantle the six adaptive algorithms that are currently locking me out of the ship’s processing core. _That_ should be simple, and free of any and all negative repercussions. Perhaps you’d like to offer some input, based on your extensive computational experience.”

“It’s just a little weird,” Young said mildly. “All of this.”

“You expecting me to rewrite the laws of physics simply because you find them inconvenient? I agree. That is, as you term it, ‘a little weird.’”

Young shrugged. “You. The chair. It could have killed you, you know.”

“Yes, well,” Rush said dismissively.

“You had no way of knowing what would happen.” Young paused, just for a second. “Did you?”

Rush’s hands stilled in midair. He looked up, his eyes sharp and very probing. It felt like he was weighing and measuring what he found in Young’s face. Or worse, like Young was a shellfish he was figuring out how to crack. “No,” Rush said at last. “Of course I didn’t."

So they were going to keep at it like this a little longer.

Young sighed. “Just get that weapon online,” he said.

When he turned away, he imagined that he could feel Rush’s gaze. The blade of Rush’s intellect, carefully dissecting his seams.

* * *

_That night, he dreams of the attack. It takes the form of some mixture of things that had and hadn’t happened, in the strange way of dreams. He’s trying to drag Rush back as alarms blare on the bridge, but he’s having to fight at the same time, the way he’d fought off the invaders in the mess, shooting wildly as sparks flare down from the overhead panels. He has no cover, and plasma bolts sear the deck around him, and he takes an agonizing shot to the knee, and he’s holding on to Rush’s ankle, and he cannot let go, or something terrible is going to happen. To Rush, or him, or to the ship. “Rush,” he tries to say, but his ribs are cracked and he is winded. Rush is trying to crawl to the door, which opens for him, but what’s behind that door isn’t the ordinary hallway. Young doesn’t know what it is. Only that he has to stop Rush, and so he brings his sidearm down on Rush’s ankle, feeling the bone crack. Then he does it again. Rush doesn’t make a sound. Maybe he doesn’t notice. He just keeps clawing desperately at the deck. “You’re going to get us killed,” Young says, as a plasma bolt hits a half-inch from his shoulder. “You’re going to get us killed!” “Then let go,” Rush says._

He woke up as, in the dream, he was bringing the gun down once more, knowing exactly where to strike to really hurt. He lay in bed, feeling faintly nauseated— he knew in intimate detail what it felt like to really hurt Rush. It took him a minute to realize that something had woken him, and another minute to realize that it had been someone knocking on the door to his quarters.

He shrugged his uniform jacket back on and combed a hand through his increasingly unruly hair. Sometimes keeping up appearances was all he had.

“Yeah,” he said, crossing the room to key the door open.

Eli was standing outside, balancing an open laptop on one hand. “Hey,” he said. “Were you— I can come back if you were sleeping.”

Young waved him in. “It’s all right. What can I do you for?”

Eli took a seat on the couch and set his laptop on the low table. “I was kind of— look, you know I do _not_ like the spying. I kind of always thought the feds would’ve tried to recruit me if I stayed at MIT, but I totally would be have been like, ‘No way, man!’ Information wants to be free. Also, the military-industrial complex is just, like—“ He stopped, looking hunted. “Not that I listen to Rush about that. I mean. Not that you’re— “

“I get it, Eli.” Young resisted the urge to drop his head in his hands. “Just— show me what you want to show me.”

“Okay, so I was going through a bunch of kino recordings from the past few days, and…” He reached out and hit play on a video file he’d pulled up.

The image showed one of Destiny’s interchangeable corridors. For a while, nothing happened. The image might have been still. Then, as Young watched, the normal harsh corridor lighting faded to a soft, luminescent blue in a slow-moving wave that propagated down the long, straight line of the hallway. Beneath the kino, Rush stepped into view, his head bent and one hand wearily rubbing at his neck. He looked tired. The kino descended to follow him, and caught the way the leading edge of the lights dimmed as Rush moved forward, almost exactly matching his pace.

“What the hell is he doing?” Young murmured.

“I don’t think _he’s_ doing it,” Eli said. “I don’t even think he’s noticed. It’s sort of the same way that doors have started just opening for him, whenever he gets close? Am I the only one who’s noticed this?”

“No,” Young said.

“It’s in a bunch of these videos.”

“From since he sat in the chair, you mean.”

“Yeah. So, about that— just keep watching.”

Young watched as, on the laptop screen, Rush kept moving down the hallway. Suddenly a door to his right slid open, pouring out a bright light that almost immediately dimmed. Rush paused, startled, and did a double take, as though wondering if he had accidentally triggered something. Then he looked into the room and frowned, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Cute,” he said tightly. “But I didn't specify a timeframe.”

He glanced sideways and caught sight of the kino. The camera went wobbly as he reached up and gave it a good push, sending it spinning down to the far end of the hallway. The picture bleached in the sudden rush of light and went dead.

Young let his head drop back against the couch. “That’s the chair room, isn’t it?

“Affirmative.”

“At the risk of repeating myself: what the hell is he doing?”

“I think—“ Eli coughed. “I kind of think it’s like the ship is trying to communicate with him?”

“By turning off the lights wherever he goes?”

“Turning them _down_. He gets, you know, headaches.”

Young stared at him. “You think the ship was trying to make him _feel better?_ ”

Eli shrugged. “Or just trying to be helpful? I mean, there’s the whole deal with the doors.”

“The door to the _chair room_ ,” Young said. “That sounds like a bad deal. I do _not_ want him cutting the science team off from key systems again. He’s done nothing but bullshit me about what happened four days ago, which makes me what I think is pretty understandably nervous. And what the fuck did he mean about a _timeframe?_ ”

"I don't know," Eli said. He was hovering, self-consciously useless, with a nervous expression.

Young sighed. "Just— try to stop him from blowing anything up in the next twenty-four hours at least, all right?"

"Right," Eli said. "Goes unsaid."

After the door had closed behind him, Young pressed a hand against it. He could feel the faint, almost life-like hum of the ship.

“Do you talk to him?” he whispered. He leant forward, letting his forehead rest against the cool metal. He closed his eyes. “Why don’t you talk to _me?_ ”

* * *

By the time Young’s radio went off again at oh-five-hundred, he’d only managed to get a few hours of sleep.

“Colonel Young, this is Rush, do you read?”

Young rolled over and buried his face in his pillow, resisting the urge to groan.

“Colonel Young?”

He fumbled for the radio. “This is Young.”

“Can you please clarify the reason a _guard_ is posted outside the chair room?”

The reason was that Young had a less than 100% conviction that a ship who was trying to get cute with Rush might not get other cute ideas, like giving him lockout codes or override privileges. He didn’t trust that _Rush_ might not get some cute ideas, like sitting in the chair again, now that he knew he could survive it, and doing who-the-hell-knew-what in the mainframe. He’d called Scott late last night and told him to put a guy on it. Now he knew that his instincts were still sharp, no matter what the state of his knee.

“Just a precaution,” he said to Rush.

There was a long silence. Young imagined what-all Rush might be up to: glaring at his radio, throwing it at a wall, holding the guard at gunpoint… did Rush have a gun? He could probably get one if he wanted, and _that_ was a worry.

“Rush?” Young said.

Rush said, in a chilly tone, “If you want me to bring the main weapon online, that requires rerouting the control systems away from the primary interface. I know these technical terms are hard for you to comprehend, but that means working with  _the chair_.”

“You can work on it later. With the rest of the science team.”

“Later,” Rush said, as though he hadn’t understood the word.

“Yes. Later. With the rest of the science team.”

There was no reply.

Young tried to go back to sleep, but arguing with Rush wasn’t conducive to relaxation. He ended up just heading to the mess for the early meal shift.

Camile Wray was there, picking at her rehydrated protein with something that could have been disgust or delicacy. It was hard to tell with Wray. That was what made her a great diplomat.

“Camile,” he said, dropping down across from her.

“Everett,” she returned. “You look exhausted.”

He shrugged, unwilling to outright lie.

“How are repairs coming along?

“Fine. A few minor—“ he grimaced— “hiccups excluded.”

She looked at him, somehow managing to radiate amusement without betraying even a hint of a smile. “You know you have a facial expression you use exclusively when discussing Dr. Rush.”

“I never said I was talking about Rush.”

“No. But your face did.”

He sighed. “Yeah, okay, I’m talking about Rush.”

“Speak of the devil.”

Young fought the impulse to plant his face in his breakfast, or possibly flee the room altogether. Rush had indeed appeared. As Young watched, he strode across the mess and grabbed a bowl of protein paste from Becker. It seemed his plan was to eat it as quickly as humanly possible while standing in front of the man, so as to give the bowl back to him with maximum efficiency. Becker was watching Rush with a resigned amusement, and Young got the feeling this scene happened all the time.

“Dr. Rush,” Wray called to him. “You can have my seat. I was just leaving.”

She stood, ignoring Young’s disgruntled look.

Rush looked confused and irritated, but approached the table as Wray left. He stood, staring at Young.

“You might as well sit,” Young said, gesturing. to the chair. “We’re going to have to talk about this plan of yours sooner or later.”

Rush narrowed his eyes. “I’m not sure what plan you’re referring to,” he said with an offhand air of nonchalance that absolutely breathed disingenuousness, and consequently sent chills down Young’s spine.

“Interfacing with the chair,” Young said uneasily. “You radioed me about it? At five in the morning?”

Rush sighed noisily and sat down across from him, practically hurling his half-empty bowl onto the table. “What are your terms? What are the _conditions_ under which you will _allow_ me to carry on doing the _very work_ that you yourself—“

Young held a hand up before Rush could really get going. “Whoa, okay, cool it down a little, Brando. I just want to set a couple of ground rules. One: the entire science team is involved. Two: someone is to be stationed outside the door at all times, in case of emergency. Three: no one sits in the chair.”

“One: I will involve Eli and no one else. Two: what do you think someone outside the room is going to do? Number three I accede to.”

“This is not a negotiation, Rush.”

“Fine. Everyone but Volker.”

“What did I just say?”

“ _Fine_.” Rush slammed his spoon down on the table. “Perfect. And what time would you like to start?”

“Any time,” Young said easily. “Just let me know. I want to be there.”

“Half past nine, then.”

“Great.”

“Yes. Great. Exceptional. Outstanding.” Rush stood.

“You didn’t finish your breakfast.”

“Oh, please. Be my guest.” Rush shoved the bowl at Young and stalked away from the table.

There was a nervous scattering of laughter after he vanished from sight, and the whole mess seemed to let out a collective breath it had been holding.

Young rolled his eyes and held in a sigh.

“Carry on, people,” he said.

* * *

The chair room was a riot of activity by the time Young arrived. Park and Volker were practically flitting around the room, booting up monitors and checking on system levels. Laptops were perched here and there, like butterflies that had alighted on the monitor banks. Eli and Brody where chatting loudly about internal rheostats, running some kind of cable between a monitor and their own laptops. Young stayed in the doorway, leaning against the wall next to Greer.

“I feel like I’m becoming an expert at this,” Greer said.

“At?”

“Watching other people watch computers.”

Young’s mouth twitched slightly. “Well, it beats alien incursions any day of the week.”

“Where’s Rush?” Volker called from behind the main console. “We’re pretty much ready to go here.”

He seemed, for some reason, to be directing the question at Young. But it was Rush who answered, as he strolled casually in: “Right here, Mr. Volker.”

As soon as Rush crossed the threshold, the lighting in the room abruptly dimmed and the chair came alive— _activated_ , Young corrected, because the chair wasn’t alive, and the ship wasn’t alive, and some sort of mechanical program that was making these things happen. It was a mechanical program that lit up the base of the chair and opened its restraints with an ugly snap that was audible even over its hum.

Rush flinched as though he’d been slapped, and took an unsteady step backwards. This brought him right into contact with Young, who had reached out on instinct for his shoulder. Young was rattled enough to pull Rush in, and he could tell Rush was rattled, too, because his heart was racing— Young felt it where he held Rush against his chest. That was unsettling. Most of the time, Rush was the thing Young was afraid of. He’d gotten used to Rush not being afraid of anything. The escape artist who could always get out of the boxes: that was Rush. It didn’t make sense that this was what scared him, this piece of furniture in a darkened room.

All the same, for a second, Young could sympathize. There was nothing about the chair that was particularly teeth-like, but if anyone had asked him, he would have said that it looked hungry. It looked very lean, very skeletal.

As though a lot of time had passed since its last meal.


	3. Chapter 3

 The adrenaline had barely stopped making Young's skin prickle before Rush tore himself free of his grasp, straightening his sleeves.

“You do realize it’s a _chair?”_ he snapped. “It’s bolted to the floor. It's hardly going to eat me for breakfast.”

“Uh,” Eli said uneasily, “you realize how creepy that was, right? I mean, even _you_ have to admit that was, like, a nine on the creepiness scale.”

“Eli.”

“What? That freaked you out. I know it did.”

Young watched Rush, who had headed to the main console and was typing with a kind of controlled fury on his laptop. He didn’t look particularly freaked out, but Young had felt the fast, ferocious clench of his heart. It made him wonder what else Rush was lying about— and then he almost laughed, because of course Rush was lying about _everything_ ; that was the whole deal; that was the #1 fact about Rush. Young had just never thought about it like that before, that Rush was also lying about what scared him or what made him sad, if Rush could even _get_ sad. If there was that much of a human inside of him.

“I’d rank it more like an eight point five out of ten in creepiness,” Volker said after a pause.

“I’d give it a seven,” Brody added. “Tops.”

“No way,” Eli said. “A _seven?_ Are you kidding me?”

“Why are the lights off?” Park asked.

“Because the chair likes it that way,” Eli said in a ridiculous Hammer horror-movie voice.

The ensuing laughter broke the tension somewhat. And nothing else happened in the next half-hour that seemed to suggest some kind of sinister consciousness to the ship, so Young pretty much sat back and watched the science team work. It was kind of enjoyable; he rarely got to oversee work on the Destiny that wasn’t happening under life-or-death pressure, or that was going well. Most of the time it was underrested civilians trying not to cry as they played soldier, or million-year-old Ancient devices that no one could get to work. The worst thing that happened in that half-hour was Rush throwing a pencil stub at Volker, which he came close to apologizing for.

They had just accessed the core systems of the neural interface when Lieutenant Scott showed up, looking out of breath.

“Sir, Homeworld Command wants to talk to you,” Scott said to Young. “Wray was using the communication stones, and she's got Colonel Telford waiting on the other end to switch with someone.”

Young swallowed a grimace.

So much for easy working atmospheres. Whenever Telford got involved, these days, things went to hell fast. Somehow it never ended up looking like Telford’s fault, either— even before Icarus, when they were working out of Cheyenne Mountain, it was the same kind of shit. He was always brainwashed, or body-switched or a time-displaced duplicate, or under the influence of mind-altering drugs, and never just a ruthless son-of-a-bitch with his own agenda. At least he’d hadn’t pulled some excuse out of his ass when it came to Emily. In that sense, getting involved with her, even though it had destroyed their friendship, was probably the most honest thing he’d done. 

But he couldn’t be avoided, so Young followed Scott to the communications room, where a tense-looking Wray was waiting for him.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Wray said, holding up her hand to stop him before he could even ask the question. “All I got was that the trouble with the Lucian Alliance is escalating, which is obviously… not good.”

They shared a look. Young thought that Wray, maybe more than anyone else, shared his sense of helplessness when it came to the conflicts back home. She had a girlfriend there, he knew, but more than that, on Earth she’d been in a position of power. She was used to being involved in what happened, not stuck millions of light-years out with no capacity to act.

He wondered if she still dreamed about Earth. He did, sometimes, though those dreams were getting more and more rare. Oddly, he almost never dreamed about Colorado Springs, where he’d been stationed for a pretty long time. It was always Wyoming, or New Mexico, or Florida. Big, full-on sensory dreams where he was out in Medicine Bow in the late weeks of springtime, when stormclouds were crowding in on the trees, and the whole world seemed crammed and green, overripe and noisy with new life. Or New Mexico, driving west to Albuquerque, doing 110 miles per hour under the stars, which you’d think he wouldn’t miss on a goddamn spaceship, but God, how he missed those stars, and that rusty scrubbed-raw smell of the Southwest. He didn’t even think about Earth that much, or have a reason to visit; he just dreamed about it, like a reflex he could never quite get rid of.

Wray said, “I think Homeworld Command is close to attempting a dial-in using an alternative power source, too, so maybe they just want to talk to you about resupply. Although that seems awfully premature.”

Yeah. And that wasn’t his kind of luck.

“Well, let’s see what they have to say,” he said, refusing to say, _Let’s get this over with._

It was Scott who switched with Telford, which was always strange to see. Scott was eager and somehow innocent where Telford was grim and wonder-weary, and it was easy to see the moment when the transfer of consciousness took place.

“Everett,” Telford said.

“David,” Young responded.

They stared at each other.

Telford jerked his head at Wray. “We need to talk alone,” he said.

Wray gave him an incredulous look. “Excuse me,” she said pointedly, as she turned and left the room.

Telford didn’t seem to notice. He sure as hell noticed, though, when Young winced as he took a seat in one of the room’s chairs.

“You’re injured _again?_ ” His primary response seemed to be offense and irritation. “How?”

“We had an incursion last week. I took some fire.”

“You need to report these things _as they happen_ ,” Telford said. “What’s your status? How much damage did you take?”

“Our repairs are almost completed. Shields and defensive arrays are up and running."

"I'd hope so."

"Look," Young said with some asperity, "Homeworld Command will have my full report within twenty-four hours.”

“We’ll be needing more than that.” Telford leaned forwards and folded his arms on the table. He looked like he thought he was the one in charge— like he was imagining himself as a general, and Young as his underling. “We’re making plans for an attempt to dial the Destiny from the alpha site. Colonel Carter and Dr. McKay have figured out a way to dial through a series of ZPMs.”

“Is that safe?”

“They aren’t sure. They need to talk to Rush.”

Young laughed shortly. “Good luck. He hasn’t used the communication stones for— what, over a year?”

Telford raised his eyebrows. "I wonder why."

Privately, Young thought that there was more to it than Rush’s traumatic bodyswitch disaster. He very much doubted that Rush still dreamed about Earth.

He shook his head. “You’re not going to get him to go back.”

“Maybe not voluntarily.”

“And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Telford studied him. He had this expression sometimes like he was playing a very high-stakes and very complicated game of chess in his head, and most of the time, these days, Young felt like one of the pieces. “You seriously think we’re going to let Rush stay on the Destiny a minute longer than we have to, once we can send additional personnel through the gate?”

“I think that’s not your call,” Young said levelly. “Is what I think. Unless you’re planning on replacing me, too.”

Telford didn’t break eye contact with him. “That decision hasn’t been made as of yet.”

“I see.” Young’s mouth twisted.

“So I’d recommend that you find a way to get him to use the stones. Since that’s an order. From General O’Neill.”

“There is no way,” Young said, enunciating the words sharply, “that I’m going to force one of my people to switch bodies with someone else _against his will_.”

“You may not have a choice in the matter,” Telford said mildly.

Young was never going to learn his lesson, apparently, about letting Telford rile him. “Cut the crap, David,” he said. “How about you stop being so goddamn coy and tell me what the hell you’re hinting around?”

Telford shrugged, cool and seemingly unaffected by Young's anger. “We’ve been studying the communication stones. If an individual has used them, even just one time, there may be a way of replacing that person without their terminal being active.”

“So, what, you’re just going to yank Rush back, with no warning, against his will, if I don’t convince him to cooperate?”

“Why do you care? Are you really going to bat for him?” Telford affected surprise. “I have to say, I thought you’d be the first to come down on the side of someone finally getting him well in hand.”

“All right, so the man is a lot of work,” Young said. 

“He’s a deceitful, manipulative little saboteur. I mean, don't get me wrong, I respect his—" Telford crooked his mouth, almost wry. "—Persistence. But you wouldn’t trust him to keep two chickens in a coop, much less to run a highly sophisticated Ancient starship that, _in case you’ve forgotten_ , also happens to be our most important interstellar weapon. What, you’re going to tell me I’m wrong?” His lip curled. “Please.”

"Why the hell did you keep him on Icarus for so long, in that case? I thought he was some kind of hotshot asset. Weren't the Lucian Alliance after him?"

Telford's eyes flicked away. "Circumstances have changed since then. His tactical value was overstated."

Young looked at him for a long time. Finally he said, keeping his tone casual, “You know, I have to admit, I got pretty curious about why Rush is such a... why he's _Rush_. Last time I used the stones, I did some digging.”

“Did you,” Telford said. He sounded bored, but he suddenly wasn’t meeting Young’s gaze.

“You know what he did before he joined the program?”

“Am I supposed to give a damn?”

“He was a math professor.”

“Yeah?” Telford said, challenging. “And what’s your point?”

“It just makes you wonder where he learned all of it. All the lying, the fighting dirty. Where he learned to manipulate people like he does. Why he seems to think it’s _necessary_.” Young paused. Telford still wouldn’t meet his eyes. “The two of you were on Icarus for a long time together. That was a pretty lonely spot."

"For Rush? Nowhere's lonely enough. Stick the man in Antarctica and he'd probably complain it was too social."

"I just wondered if you got to know each other."

“Why would  _I_ get to know  _Rush?_ "

“Well," Young said, still casual, "like I said, he was a high-profile Lucian Alliance target. And you were working for them at the time— sorry, I mean you were  _under their influence._ Not _working for them_ , of course.”

Telford said softly, “I don’t think I like what you’re implying.” Now he did look at Young. His eyes were very dangerous. “You think you _know_ Rush? What, you’ve got a soft spot for him now?”

“That’s not—“

“You don’t know the first thing goddamn thing about him. Not the first goddamn thing.”

“… But you do,” Young said. It wasn’t a question. " _You_ know him."

They stared at each other.

The silence stretched, like a wire pulled taut between their bodies.

“I have to get back,” Telford said at last. “We’ll be expecting your report in the next twenty-four hours. When you file it, you can let us know when Rush will be using the stones.”

He’d barely switched back with Scott— the hyper-alertness fading from Scott’s body, his face turning softer, and less marked by hard intelligence— when Young’s radio went.

“Colonel Young, come in.” It was Greer.

Young’s reaction was an inappropriately powerful sense of dread. He sighed and reached for the radio. “Yeah. This is Young.”

“Sir, we have a situation in the chair room. You might want to get down here.”

“Goddamnit,” Young murmured, closing his eyes.

* * *

“Hey,” Eli was saying to Rush when Young reentered the chair room. “Give me a break. It’s not a static system, okay? It’s in some kind of dynamic equilibrium, and if I upset that, we don’t know what the consequences will—“

“I’m _aware_ of that, Eli,” Rush snapped.

“What the hell’s going on here?” Young demanded.

Rush sighed and turned away, his hand going to the back of his neck. He was standing near the chair, clutching a pair of pliers, and looking like he was about halfway to being worked up about something. The rest of the science team was clustered in the corner of the room, staring at a monitor screen.

“So—“ Eli began, when no one else stepped in with an explanation. “We had to interrupt the power supply running from the chair to the main weapons array, but there was no way to circumvent the adaptive algorithms protecting the chair’s central programming. We had to sever the connection manually.”

“Okay,” Young said. He’d understood… most of that.

“And so when Rush got close to the chair so he could open the panel, he kind of— got trapped behind a force field?”

Young looked at Rush. Rush shrugged jerkily. He wasn't halfway to being worked up about something, Young realized; he was hiding a real uneasiness, badly, trying to smother it under his usual nervous mix of irritation and confidence.

"See for yourself," Rush said. He reached out with the pair of pliers, until— about six inches from where Young was standing— the tips seemed to trigger a transparent golden field. When Rush withdrew the pliers, the field vanished again. "Hurts like hell when you touch it."

“Right,” Young said, resisting the urge to scrub a hand over his face. “Of course. Of course this is what’s happening.”

“The thing is,” Eli said hesitantly, “the force field’s getting its energy from the chair. That means the power’s coming from the central core. Which— is going to make getting it down really, really tricky.”

“But not impossible,” Young said. It came out like an order.

“Sure. Not impossible,” Eli said. He sounded less than 100% certain.

Rush didn’t say anything. Young looked at him. Rush was staring down at the deck, neck bent, a muscle ticcing subtly in his cheek. Young was willing to bet he had a good idea of what was going on here, or at the very least knew more than he was telling. _Even now_ , Young thought with something between anger and amazement. _Even now_ Rush would refuse to say, would hang on to whatever goddamn cards he was holding to his chest, and still expect Young to do everything possible to save him—

Which Young would do, of course. And not just out of duty— not just because Rush was part of his crew. Not out of a need to atone, either, which was the easy explanation. He wasn’t sure if he even believed in atonement. You couldn’t cancel out the things that you’d done; It didn’t work that way. And he’d seen shit, in Somalia, and then, with the Stargate program, from the Lucian Alliance and the Goa’uld, that made him think that men were capable of damage there was no undoing. They couldn’t fix it themselves, God or Jesus or whoever couldn’t fix it; nobody else could fix it for them. But maybe that was it— that _because_ you couldn’t undo it, you were always tied up with somebody you’d hurt; you were part of them in a way you couldn’t take back or manage. He felt like he was a part of Rush. Like Rush was a part of him. He didn’t know what to make of that. He didn’t think he had to know what to make of it. It was just something he had to live with.

“Rush,” he said, and saw Rush’s head lift a little. “Is there anything you can do from over there?”

Rush made a vague, frustrated gesture and chucked his pliers at the base of the chair. They bounced off, deflected by another force field.

“I’ll take that as a no. All right, so— let’s get somebody in from Earth. What are we thinking? Carter or McKay?”

“McKay, I suppose,” Rush said. “He’s more widely conversant with Ancient systems.”

“Done.” Young nodded to Greer, who’d been waiting in the doorway. “Take Volker with you." When they'd gone, he prompted, "What else? Other options?"

Park said hesitantly, “We could try to drain shipwide power levels. Fire the weapons, increase demand. It might cut power to the field.”

Rush shook his head. “We’d almost certainly drop out of FTL long before enough power is drained to make any kind of difference. We can’t risk it, with the likelihood that we’re being pursued.”

“All right,” Young said. “What else? Brainstorm, people.”

“Uh,” Eli said, his voice trailing up in alarm. “The power flow is changing, you guys—“

“Changing _how?_ ” Rush asked quickly.

“The field harmonics are fluctuating,” Brody said.

“What does that mean?” Young demanded.

No one answered him. Park and Brody had gathered around Eli’s computer. Only Rush spared a glance at Young.

“I’d clear the room of nonessential personnel,” he said without explanation.

“Why?” Young said. “What’s about to happen?”

“Oh, crap,” Eli said quietly.

There was an electric sound, like a power line loaded past capacity. The force field flared to life, sparking and impossibly bright, before it collapsed to contain an area that was about three foot by three foot. In other words, just enough space for Rush and the chair. Rush looked trapped; he wrapped one hand in his sleeve and brought it up to touch the force field, like he was feeling his way along the wall of a cage.

“Okay, Park, Brody— out,” Young ordered. “I’m not risking anybody else until we know what the hell is going on here. Unless somebody wants to throw out ideas?”

“It wasn’t me,” Eli said, fingers flying across his keyboard. “That’s all I can tell you. That fluctuation came from _Destiny’s mainframe._ And it was _designed_ to collapse the field. It’s like it’s— and I _know_ you’re going to hate this, but just stay with me, okay— _herding_ him. Like, herding him towards the chair.”

“Eli.”

“I know, I know!” Eli glanced at Park and Brody. “You guys should probably go. There’s literally nothing we can do right now. The field's drawing the same amount of energy, and spreading it over a smaller area, so it's even stronger than before."

Young rubbed at the bridge of his nose and turned to Rush, who had stayed significantly silent. “Do you want to fill me in on why this is happening?" he asked. "To _you_ , of all people?”

Rush was staring at the floor. “I’m sure I don't know.”

“That’s such bullshit, Rush.”

“What, you think I _planned_ for this to happen?” Something tense in his expression suggested that the answer was _no_. He hadn’t planned or wanted this. He didn’t like close quarters. Young could remember him getting edgy whenever he was pent-up and unable to move.

“No,” Young said. “But I’m pretty damn sure you know what’s going on.”

“Fuck you,” Rush spit at him, lashing out suddenly at the base of the chair and sending sparks from the force field flying off.

“Losing our tempers already? That was quick.”

Young turned towards the new voice. “Volker?”

“Definitely not Volker,” Volker said, striding into the room with a bouncing step that didn't belong to his body.

“Rodney,” Rush said, casting his eyes upwards. “Thank God.”

“You look terrible, Nick,” McKay said. “Will no one lend you a razor?”

“I’ve more pressing problems at the moment, I’m afraid.”

“Just noting. Hey, Math Boy.” McKay snapped his fingers at Eli. “Laptop, please. Faster. Come on. Let’s get going.”

Eli handed his laptop over to McKay, who headed to the main console. “You know what your problem is, Colonel?” McKay said to Young without looking up.

“I’m sure I’m about to find out.”

“Your science team is being run by a mathematician. There’s a reason it’s not called a math team.”

“I was an engineering major,” Eli offered.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” McKay said. “Did you graduate? I believe the term _major_ implies that you have a degree of some kind.”

Young looked at Rush, who, despite McKay’s presence, still seemed uneasy. He was rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, and his arms were folded across his chest.

“I think I like you better than him,” Young said quietly to Rush, trying to defuse the situation a little.

Rush gave him a faint taut smile. “That would be a first.”

Young shrugged. “You clearly haven’t met Colonel Carter.”

“Tell me about this fluctuation,” McKay was saying to Eli. “What triggered it; what were you trying? Were you messing around with harmonic compression?”

“I didn’t _do_ anything!” Eli said defensively. “It just _happened_! The  _ship_ did it on its own!"

“No no no no no. See, what you’re obviously missing is—“

A mechanical trill from Eli’s laptop cut McKay off, and some sort of chiming alarm started to sound. The two of them bent over the computer, eyes intent and unhappy.

“What’s happening?” Rush said loudly.

“That’s— why on earth would that be—“ McKay muttered to himself.

 _Something_ was happening inside the force field box. Young couldn’t quite make out what it was. Rush was looking upwards, his face strained and disbelieving. “Oh, fuck you,” he said, his voice jerking up with what sounded like panic. “Fuck you; you _bastard,_ did you have to— _fuck—_ “

At first Young didn’t understand what he was seeing. Rush’s face was damp, and sure, maybe someone else in the same situation would be crying, but that really didn’t seem like Rush. Then he realized that water was leaking from the ceiling onto the deck plates, collecting within the boundaries of the force field. The energy didn't seem to be reacting with the water. The same barriers that had kept Rush from tinkering with the base of the chair were protecting it from any kind of water-plus-electronics disaster, but nothing was protecting Rush— Rush, who was now stuck in a box rapidly filling with water, already an inch and counting, at least.

“Eli,” Rush said unevenly, “I really need you to—“

“I don’t know where it’s coming from!” Eli said. “I mean, it’s obviously being rerouted from somewhere, but we’re being locked out of a whole branch of systems, and—“

“ _Eli_ ,” Rush said.

Okay. Rush was not dealing with this well. Young moved forward to stand as close as possible to the force field, lining his toes up at the sparking edge, and tried to project reassurance. This was what he was supposed to be good at. This was one of those things that officers _did._

“Rush. Look at me,” he said, keeping his voice low and steady. “You’re fine. You’re going to be fine. It’s not that much water.” The water was barely over the tops of Rush’s boots.

“ _Don’t_ ,” Rush snapped, “talk to me like I’m an _idiot_ or an _infant._ ” He was breathing hard, almost hyperventilating.

“That’s not what I’m doing, okay? I just want you to keep looking at me.”

“ _Fuck_ you and your fucking psychology bullshit. Tell McKay to _get me out of here_.”

“I’m working on it!” McKay called across the room tersely. “I’m trying to cut power now. Just— hold onto your horses.”

The water had crawled up almost to Rush’s ankles. It was splashing a little every time he moved, which was a lot, because he kept flinching in short abortive bursts.

“You’re fine,” Young said again, wishing he didn’t feel so much like he was lying. Something of Rush’s panic was communicating itself to him. He swallowed roughly. ‘We’re going to get you out of here. Just—“

Rush had twisted around, and was looking at the chair with a fierce sort of calculation.

“ _No_ ,” Young said at once. “No way. Don’t even _think_ about it.”

“This is not sustainable,” Rush said. He was pretty clearly trying to sound like he was not freaking out to the actual, full-on extent that he was. “This is not— a sustainable situation.”

“Give McKay a chance,” Young said. He was still trying to make his voice sound soothing, but he had a feeling that wasn’t going to fly with Rush. For starters, Rush seemed like the kind of guy who wasn’t easily soothed in general. Like— the kind of guy who always assumed he was about to get hurt. And if anyone was going to convince him otherwise, it wasn’t going to be Young, which was… fair enough, really.

“Just… hang on,” he said futilely, and raised his hand as though he could press it against the force field, or even maybe reach through and touch Rush, though Rush always hated to be touched, so maybe that was the upside of a force field, for him.

“Colonel,” Eli whispered.

The water was climbing up Rush’s legs.

Young crossed the room to where Eli and McKay, looking haggard, were still hunched over Eli’s laptop.

Before Young could even ask, McKay spoke. “This ship is fighting me,” he said, sounding so quiet and so serious that his voice was almost unrecognizable as himself. “This isn’t a protective network of interlocking algorithms preventing manipulation of the chair. This is a full-blown _AI_ embedded in the Destiny’s CPU. Even if I _could_ dismantle it, which— I doubt that even _I_ could— there’s no way to predict what the consequences might be shipwide.”

“We’ve pretty much always thought that there might be something like this going on with the ship,” Eli added. “If there is, it’s probably in charge of— like, a _whole_ lot of stuff.”

“So you can’t get him out,” Young said.

Eli looked miserably at McKay.

“No,” McKay said. “Not a chance.”

Young turned away from a second, unable to control his expression. “… Yeah. Okay,” he said.

“He might be able to get _himself_ out, though,” McKay said thoughtfully. “If he actually sits in the chair. Assuming that it doesn’t, you know, kill him or anything.”

“Right.”

Young glanced over his shoulder. Rush’s eyes were squeezed shut. Young could see the rapid, jerky rise-and-fall of his breathing. He was trying to balance on the base of the chair, though the water was still coming up over his ankles.

He opened his eyes as Young approached. There was a second— just a second– when he couldn’t quite get a lid on his animal fear, and it was there in his expression, raw and hard to look at. Then he bent his head and raked his hair back, and by the time he looked up again, Young almost, almost couldn’t tell that there was some level at which he was screaming at the top of his lungs. If he hadn’t seen that one second he might not have known at all.

“How is—“ Rush swallowed. “How is giving McKay a chance working out?”

He knew the answer already, of course. He could probably read it in Young’s face. He was just taking the opportunity to rub it in.

“I’m sorry,” Young said.

Rush gave him a faint, shaky trace of a smile. “Oh, of course you’re _sorry_. I’m never going to let you live this down, you know.” He raised his voice. “And that goes double for you, McKay.”

He looked like he was barely holding it together, but he still paused and gave the chair a considering glance, as though he thought he might, at the last minute, come up with some other option. Workarounds— that was what Rush did best. There was no workaround for this, though, and after a moment, he sank into the chair. The metal restraints snapped closed at once, hard around his wrists and ankles. At the same time, the water shut off and seemed to start draining through the deck plates.

There was a long pause.

The neural bolts did not engage.

“This is new,” Rush murmured, as a panel emerged over his left shoulder and projected a grid of blue-white light over his neck and the side of his head. Only a slight tick at the at the corner of his mouth showed that he was still suppressing panic.

“It’s scanning you,” Eli said. “It just ID’d you as— well, not Ancient, which hopefully it’s not super pissed about. We’re getting your vitals, and some kind of biochemical analysis.”

“That can’t be right,” McKay said, squinting at the screen.

Rush’s eyes flicked towards him, suddenly wary.

“Oh, hang on,” Eli said. “Now it's not so much analyzing something biochemically as performing an organic synthesis?"

With a sudden hiss, the panel near Rush’s shoulder opened and a hydraulically powered projectile launched itself at Rush’s neck, carrying thin tubing behind it. Rush flinched hard, but didn’t make a sound.

“Rush?” Eli asked uncertainly.

“Yes yes,” Rush said. He was biting his lip. “I’m fine.”

“You’re getting some kind of salt solution.”

“Normal saline,” McKay corrected. “Hopefully it’s not a million years old and contaminated with Ancient bacteria.”

“Ugh,” Eli said.

Rush eyed them incredulously. “I want to thank you both. You’ve been _so_ helpful.”

“Rush,” Young said, trying once more for the right note of comfort. “We’ll get you out of there. It’s going to be fine.”

“I find these unending platitudes of yours infinitely reassuring. By all means, continue. Are you also going to tell me to look at you again?”

“I’m serious,” Young said. He was. Rush seemed calmer— the water had mostly drained off by now, which probably helped— but there was something distressed about him that Young didn’t like. It triggered a sort of protective instinct.

“I know you are,” Rush said. He sounded sleepy. The fluid in the tubing that ran to his neck had changed from something clear to a pale green color.

“Rush,” Eli said sharply.

“…Eli,” Rush said, blinking. "Yes. I'm... 'm..." His eyes were drifting closed.

“Hey,” Eli said, snapping his fingers. “You need to stay awake. _Rush._ ”

But Rush was unconscious.

The sudden crack of the neural interface bolts caused Young to jump.

He tried to hide his unease, looking over at McKay and Eli. “What's happening?"

Eli brought up a display in midair. “Okay, so we’ve got his vitals, which are stable; we’ve got something that is pretty much like an EEG, which is showing us delta waves; this looks like sympathetic activation, which I assume is kind of like a rough gauge of pain or panic. He was _really_ high, but he just dropped to zero, which I’m thinking is probably from the injection.”

Young rubbed his jaw, looking at the displays. He still couldn’t make much sense of them. (Rush was always bitching about how no one on the Destiny took time to learn Ancient.) He watched the graphs pulse and the foreign characters change.

“What does the ship _want_ with him?” he murmured, half to himself.

“Well, another display just popped up,” McKay said. He peered at the screen. “I think it's a representation of the Ancient genetic code.” He pointed a rapidly progressing list of Ancient letters running across the top of the display. “And this is Rush’s.” —A second series scrolling along the bottom.

“It’s comparing them,” Eli said, sounding uncertain. “Maybe it’s trying to learn about us?”

As they watched, the characters came to a halt and a new window opened. It displayed what looked like a single progress bar.

Eli made an unhappy sound.

Young pointed to the screen. “What does that say?”

It was McKay who answered: “Percent complete.”

"What does that mean?" Young looked from one of their uncomfortable faces to the other. "What does that  _mean?_ "

"It wasn't comparing them," Eli whispered, looking down. "The two genetic codes. It was trying to figure out how to turn  _his_ into  _theirs_."

Young shut his eyes.

When he opened them again, the Ancient characters were still blinking on the screen, like a judgment.

_PERCENT COMPLETE._

_PERCENT COMPLETE._


	4. Chapter 4

It took seven hours for the Destiny to decide that Rush was "complete."

Young found it hard to leave the room at any point during those seven hours. He suspected he wasn’t the only one. Eli stuck close to his computer, and Greer— who didn’t even _like_ Rush, for God’s sake— kept patrolling in long, slow, restless circles, his rifle never leaving his hands. Young had called TJ in at some point, mostly to feel like he was _doing_ something, but also so she could check out Rush’s vital stats, and she had gotten one look at Rush before settling in for the long haul. Young had to admit that Rush looked pretty grim. Or just— really small in that goddamn chair, and kind of sickly. His eyes had that bruised quality you got when you couldn’t sleep. Not that Young would know anything about that.

McKay finally left after about six hours, but he seemed determined to go out with an explosive argument.

“I might as well head back to Earth. My expertise is situationally useless,” he announced to Young. “And I don’t say that lightly, and I want to emphasize the _situational_ part of that statement; my inability to get anything done is solely the result of your total lack of knowledge about your own computer systems. Seriously, who ignores an active, advanced, computationally expensive AI?”

“Rush,” Young said, since that was clearly the punchline.

“Um,” Eli said, looking up. “I’m pretty sure that, actually…” He trailed off.

Young shut his eyes. “Eli.”

“Look, we never triggered any defensive measures from the AI, but we _have_ to have interacted with it. Based on what I’m looking at in the CPU, I think it sets the countdown clock and charts our course. It’s probably designed to monitor and interact with people on board, and, you know, protect the ship from crazy blue alien invaders, which, if you think about it, is kind of what happened four days ago. There’s no _way_ thatit didn’t notice Rush cracking the code, or sitting the chair, or taking control of the ship, so…” He hesitated again. “I think we should probably consider the possibility that it was talking to Rush and he just never bothered to mention it.”

“Right,” Young said. “Of course. What was I thinking.”

It was obvious in retrospect. He remembered Rush during the battle, standing on the bridge, his head tilted, his expression abstracted, his attention focused on something that no one else could see.

“To be fair,” Eli said, “mentioning that you’re having conversations with computer programs no one else can see is maybe not that great of an idea if you’re already on the, uh, eccentric side.”

“Making excuses for him isn’t part of your mandate,” Young said shortly. He turned to McKay. “Let’s get back to you and your useless expertise.”

“ _Situationally_ useless,” McKay emphasized again.

“What are you going to put in your report? You can’t tell Homeworld Command about any of this. In fact, I think it would be best if the information didn’t leave this room.”

“I assume you’re joking,” McKay said. “Your evil computer kidnaps someone and turns him into an Ancient, and you think I’m going to keep my mouth shut about that? No way.”

“Look, Homeworld Command already doesn’t like him,” Young said bluntly. “If you give them a reason to suggest he’s been compromised, it’s going to destroy his credibility.”

“Nice try.” McKay was pacing a little, getting worked up. “But I destroy people’s credibility all the time. It’s actually a specialty of mine.”

“Undermining confidence in our chief scientist could damage morale. I don’t think you understand what that means on a mission like this one. It could cost _lives._ ”

“Look,” McKay said, leveling a finger at Young. “You think I don’t know what’s going on here? Nick Rush is an arrogant asshole. I don’t really like him that much. But in the interest of arrogant assholes everywhere, I’m not going to stand by and let you use this as an excuse to get rid of him, of whatever euphemism you want to use, just because he happened to be both irritating and and modified to interface with the ship. I’m not an idiot. No one would ask questions if he happened to die while using a million-year-old Ancient interface chair, but telling everyone he’s been modified, trying to keep him from accessing critical systems— which will _never_ work, and he’ll _always_ find a way to get access, because he’s a _brat_ when it comes to workarounds— and then executing him as some kind of security risk? That would raise a hell of a lot of questions. So _all of this_ —“ McKay gestured broadly around the room— “is going in my report, and is going to be dealt with in a civilized way. Not whatever the hell you people do out here when you’re not stranding each other on deserted planets.”

The room was silent. Eli, Greer and TJ were carefully not looking at Young.

“I’m not going to _kill_ him,” Young said. It sounded weak, even to him. But he was more concerned with— “Wait a minute. Modified to interface with the _ship?_ ”

“Yeah, uh,” Eli said awkwardly. “So, I was actually going to explain this. You know how we’ve always been locked out of Destiny’s systems? Sure, we got a little more access when Rush broke the code, but there are whole parts of the ship that we still can’t get into. Physically and metaphorically. I”m pretty sure that’s not an accident. It makes sense, just from a security standpoint, that you’d only be able to take full control of the ship by having an Ancient use the interface chair. It prevents the ship from falling into the wrong hands, and it also seems like it’s integral to the way the ship is designed. Destiny’s not supposed to be like a _tool_ or a _machine._ That’s not the way the Ancients thought about tech.” He was getting passionate, his hands rising to gesture in the air. “I’m not saying Ancient tech is _alive_ or something, but— it’s just a totally different worldview. It’s like Atlantis!” He turned to McKay. “Come on, back me up here.”

McKay rolled his eyes. “All right, fine, yes, so Sheppard says it gets sad when he’s gone. I don’t know how much stock you should put in that, because he also used to name the helicopters at McMurdo. But— yes, okay, on the very simplest fundamental level, without getting into nonlinear dynamical systems and emergence, you could say that Ancient technology is designed to be minimally sentient. It wants a biochemically compatible operator to interact with it.”

“… And now it’s got one,” Eli said. “So that’s good! It’s really good! I mean, assuming that he survives this. He’ll bond with the ship, and maybe, you know, he’ll be nicer, because now he’ll have a friend, and the ship’ll have a friend, and it’ll be… good times for everyone.” His expression was uneasy.

Young scrubbed at his face. Right. Good times. “There’s another complication,” he said. “Which I hesitate to mention, because it absolutely cannot leave this room. Earlier, when I was talking to David Telford, he told me that Homeworld Command is working on a way of pulling people’s consciousnesses back to Earth, regardless of whether they’re using the communication stones. As in: against their will. Guess who their number one pick is.”

“Carter pulled the plug on that project,” McKay said, shaking his head. “As soon as she was put in command of the resupply mission. She would never—

“Telford says otherwise. My guess is someone went behind Carter’s back. And if Atlantis gets sad when Sheppard goes on vacation, imagine what’s going to happen if Rush is all buddy-buddy with the ship and Homeworld Command decides to yank him out of his body?”

“…Yikes,” Eli said.

McKay was still focused on the political machinations. “I just _bet_ that’s Bill Lee’s big secret project. He won’t shut up about it. But if Carter doesn’t know, then who are they even going to switch with Rush?”

“I’ll give you one guess,” Young said flatly.

“Telford.” McKay made a disgusted noise. “There is something _wrong_ with that guy.”

“If he finds out about this, he’s not going to be able to resist messing with it,” Young pointed out. “If anything, it’s going to make him more determined to pull Rush out. Look— I’m not thrilled about lying to Homeworld Command, but you’ve got to see that this is one hell of an explosive situation. The last thing you want to do is throw more fuel on the fire.”

McKay hesitated. “I want to do what’s best for _Nick_ ,” he said. “If I redact my report, you’re going to need to prove it was the right choice. Get Math Boy here to stay in touch, so I know that everyone’s still, you know, unexecuted.”

“I already said I wasn’t going to _kill_ him,” Young said, exasperated.

“Right. Uh-huh.” McKay looked skeptical. “Let’s just make sure there aren’t any little slip-ups.”

“Fine.” Young waved exhaustedly at Greer to take McKay back to the communications stones.

“Always a pleasure to visit such a delightful workplace environment,” McKay said snottily as he left.

Young dropped his head, massaging his neck in a way that made him think forcefully of Rush. He wished he’d gotten more sleep. He wished he’d gotten ten years of sleep. On the Destiny, he mostly felt like it just never stopped. Whatever _it_ was.

“So,” Eli said after a long pause. “I didn’t want to bring this up when McKay was here, but there is one _tiny_ problem with the Atlantis analogy.”

Young made a gesture not dissimilar to the one he might have given someone in a fight. _Go ahead; I’m ready for it; bring it on._

“The people who work with the tech on Atlantis have, like, one or two Ancient genes. I think Sheppard’s got two, but the gene therapy they do over there is just changing _one_. This is like… a lot of genes. As in, thousands. Based on what the computer's saying, I think he’s going to end up more than sixty percent Ancient, if you can even really quantify that kind of thing.”

Young covered his face.

There was a silence.

“I’m _really_ hoping he gets nicer,” Eli said.

* * *

Young had thought, for no real reason, that when the ship was done “modifying” Rush— a word he hated, especially after hearing it thrown around so much during the past seven hours, since it made him think of someone rewriting a computer program, not making changes to someone’s real, warm, actual, human flesh— it would sound an alarm or something, or Rush would just open his eyes. But nothing that drastic happened.

Instead, as the seventh hour ended, Eli said quietly, "It's almost done."

A light on the monitor screen began blinking, calling attention to itself, as though they somehow might have forgotten, any of them, what was happening in the chair.

"—Here we go," Eli said, as the displays begin to flicker: heart rate rising, some other measurement falling, jumpy bursts of overlapping blue-colored lines. 

"TJ?" Young said uneasily.

TJ frowned at the screen. “I don’t love his vitals.”

“The neural interface is charging,” Eli said. “I’m guessing this is the part where it gets dicey.”

Young looked at him incredulously. “As opposed to the rest of it, which’s been a walk in the park?”

The mechanical hum of the chair, which set Young’s teeth on edge, built into something that sounded grinding and violent.

“It looks like he’s entering REM sleep,” TJ said. “The EEG is showing mixed frequencies with sawtooth bursts. But this is— really intense. His body can’t take it for long.”

“Whatever it’s doing, it’s not dumping information,” Eli said. “Which is— good? That’s good? The transfer’s actually going in the opposite direction. Like it’s getting information from him. Um— in a voluntary or involuntary way, I guess.”

Young closed his eyes. “Jesus. _That’s_ just perfect _._ ”

“Relax; who’s it going to leak it to, the Lucian Alliance? God, you are so military.”

“ _Eli_ ,” Young said, clenching his teeth. He suspected that Eli felt, as he did, almost nauseated with tension, and unable to in any way discharge it. That was one of the horrors of command, and maybe, he guessed, one of the horrors of science. Both involved watching things unfold from a distance.

“There’s some kind of countdown happening,” Eli said rapidly. “Okay, okay, this is— uh, guys, whatever this is is about to—“

There was that weird, sickening, pitching-floor sense that accompanied a drop out of FTL.

The lights died abruptly, and the vibrations shut off in the deck under their feet.

Young could hear him own breathing in the sudden dark of the room. He was astonished by the ragged sound.

“We just lost power shipwide,” Eli said. The light from his laptop screen made him look oddly ghostly. “Or— actually, we’ve got emergency power in here, but everywhere else is—“

Young’s radio crackled, loud in the silence. “Colonel Young, this is Brody.”

Young grabbed it. “Go ahead?”

“We’ve got massive power failures all over Destiny— life support, weapons, shields, sensors, sublight engines; we’re dead in the water.”

Young met Eli’s eyes over the radio. “Is Rush doing this?”

“I mean, I’m relatively sure he’s not doing it on purpose, but there’s no way this is not related.”

“We _have_ to have sensors and shields.” Young paced close to where the chair was still surrounded by the occasional glimmer of the force field, bright and unnerving in the darkness. It was hard for him to see Rush's face. “Is there _any_ way we can communicate with him? We are _fucked_ if we can’t get—“

“I _know_!” Eli almost shouted. “I know we are, okay?”

“Then give me something that I can—“

Abruptly, the lights flared to full strength above them, so bright that it was actually painful. The sublight engines began to grind under the deck plating. The radio was crackling, and an alarm was chiming worryingly from somewhere nearby, and then another at a subtly different pitch, and a third, and what sounded like a _speaker system_ was broadcasting a high-pitched piercing whine of static jumbled with bursts of incoherent musical noise.

For a long and overwhelming second, Young couldn’t make sense out of any of what he heard. He managed to isolate Brody’s voice on the radio for a moment: “systems activating— everything— power— know— most of this stuff _is_ —”

There were voices talking over each through the static. It was like overhearing a cocktail party from very far away or behind a wall. You wanted to understand what people were saying, but you couldn’t get any closer, and too many of the words got lost.

Gradually the noise began to fade, and resolved itself into the sound of a solitary piano, calm, precise, and melancholy, but maybe with a complicated note of joy.

“What _is_ that?” Eli asked hesitantly, looking up at the ceiling.

They listened to the music without speaking.

“That’s Rush,” Greer said quietly from the corner. “Doing his thing.”

* * *

It didn’t take Eli long to determine that not only had they gotten full power back, but they had access to almost _everything_. “Internal sensors, intercom system, research labs, plus the entire ship database. Everything’s unlocked. Shields and weapons are at one hundred percent, the main weapon is back online, we’ve got backup power generators all over the place, and… yup, here we go, we should be jumping back to FTL…”

He looked expectantly upwards.

Sure enough, there was the disorienting jerk.

“So this is good,” Young said, steadying himself against a monitor.

“Are you kidding? This is _awesome._ ” Eli was paging through data almost faster than he seemed able to keep up with. He didn’t look like he noticed when the music cut off, or when the bright edges of the force field around the chair disintegrated. When an alarm chimed softly, however, and the midair displays changed from orange to blue, he looked up— just in time to see a panel on the back of the chair open and extrude some kind of touchscreen interface.

“Oh. Hey!” Eli said, and made a beeline for it.

Young had to catch him by the neck of his t-shirt. “Whoa, there,” he said. “Not so fast.”

“I’m just going to _look_ , okay? No touching.” Eli held his hands up, looking affronted.

They looked. The screen showed the outline of a human hand— or, well, Ancient, which freaked Young out a little bit. He was a simple guy. He liked being able to see differences. The idea that you could look at a hand and not be able to tell, by that one look alone, if it was _like_ you, or if it was a million years’ worth of different, a million years and however many genes Eli had said, which made it— look, he liked John Sheppard fine, better than fine; he'd missed the guy when he was off in Pegasus and Young had still been stationed back on Earth. But one time he’d been on a mission with Sheppard to some place where there was an Ancient temple or whatever, with one of those magical devices that, when Sheppard got close, would light up and start humming to itself, almost like a cat purring. Sheppard had kind of run his hand across it, which only strengthened the impression, because that was exactly what you’d do to a pet, and Young had asked him, just kind of idly, trying to get a conversation going, “So how old is this place, anyway?” and Sheppard had stared out at where the sea was eroding the steps of the temple. “Old,” he’d said. But there’d been this look on his face when he said it that Young still couldn’t describe, except to say that it had given him chills, because he’d thought to himself, _I don’t know this man at all_. Even though he _did_ know Sheppard, had known him for years. That was the kind of look that Sheppard had had.

And that was two genes.

“Okay,” Eli said. He’d been peering at the Ancient text on the touchscreen. “So this is supposed to— hmm. It’s how we’re supposed to get him out of the chair. But I guess in order to do that, you have to go into the interface? Like— I’m presuming he can’t separate himself from the CPU, so someone else has to do it. It looks like you have to connect to him mentally somehow, which— fun times. I’m sure his brain is totally normal.”

“Is there anything about this in the database?” Young asked.

“I can check. It might take a while.”

“TJ, are we good to leave him like this?” He looked over at her.

“I mean,” TJ said. “It’s obviously not ideal. But he’s stable right now, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Young nodded at Eli. “See what you can find. I’m going to check in with Brody and make sure the power situation’s normal.”

He was headed towards the bridge, finally allowing himself to lean heavily on his uninjured leg and wondering how much he’d worry TJ if he asked her for codeine, when the sound of his own name stopped him.

“Everett.”

The voice was familiar. It was also supposed to be on the other side of the universe. (He could almost hear Rush disdainfully telling him that the universe didn’t have sides.) Not only that, but it was more than enough of a coincidence for him to find the whole thing eerie. Like _eerie_ eerie. The hair stood up on the back of his neck.

He turned slowly and looked at something that was wearing the body of John Sheppard. It was a good imitation, down to his jacket’s Atlantis insignia. With his hair just a little too long and his uniform just a little too rumpled, he could have been heading out of Cheyenne Mountain right after setting some general’s teeth on edge.

“Shep,” Young said. “Although— that’s not really who you are, is it?”

“Very perceptive,” the thing that wasn’t Sheppard said. “Although you must admit that it is not exactly ‘rocket science.’”

Young could practically hear the quotations around the words. He winced. Sheppard didn’t talk like that; he talked like— like a human.

“Do you not appreciate my mastery of human colloquialisms?” not-Sheppard asked.

“Mastery’s a little strong.” Young kept his voice steady. “You must be the Destiny.”

“I am the AI at the center of Destiny’s mainframe.”

“Nice to finally meet you,” Young said. He was pretty sure he wanted to stay this thing’s good side. Eli had seemed to think it was essential to the running of the ship. But he wasn’t feeling that kindly inclined towards it, truth be told. Even if hadn’t apparently reached into his head without asking and helped itself to John Sheppard’s likeness, he would just have been thinking about that goddamn force field box and the way it had slowly filled up with water. “I assume you’re here to talk about Rush?”

“He is important to me. He is needed.”

“Just a tip: try sending a card next time. It tends to go over better than making someone relive their own torture.”

The AI didn’t appear to understand. It frowned at him, a strangely un-Sheppard-like expression. “He is needed,” it said again. “But he also needs someone. He cannot be alone. If he is alone, then the ship will pull him in.”

Young felt his eye twitch. He resisted the urge to let his frustration take over. _Thank you for that very fucking cryptic explanation_ , he wanted to snap. Instead, he said carefully, “That’s, uh, not as clear as you seem to think it is. I could use a little more context. You’re talking about the interface? Getting him out of the CPU?”

It looked dissatisfied. “Your expressive ability is very limited. I cannot tell whether you understand the concept.”

“Let’s assume I don’t,” Young said. “Limited expressive ability, that’s me all over. Maybe break it down for me in very small words.”

It raked a hand through its spiky hair, which was just such a _Sheppard_ motion that for a moment an intense wave of cognitive dissonance hit. But then it spoke in that stilted and semi-disdainful manner. “Your language does not have the correct frequentative form. Someone must get him out of the CPU. Yes. Now and— from now on. He is no longer separate. He is a part of Destiny. He will not leave this ship again.”

“Well, that’s just _perfect,_ ” Young snapped before he could control his reaction. He turned away for a minute, clenching his fists. When he was sure his tone would be level again, he said, “You said the ship will _pull him in_. What does that mean?”

It hesitated for a moment. “Destiny does not want to be alone. It will demand his attention. But it is too large for a person’s mind. He will get lost in it. This is why he must have a counter. A—“ It tilted its head. “An _anchor_. Someone who will keep watch over him."

“And what Eli said about connecting to Rush’s _brain?_ Is that also part of this whole deal? The— what did you call it, frequentative form?”

So much for the pleasure. Now it just looked disappointed, as though Young had failed some unbelievably simple test. Sheppard never looked like that, even though he had to be thinking it sometimes, since the guy was some kind of secret genius, or so Young had heard— Sheppard never really talked about it; he let you feel like the two of you were on the same level. Maybe he was just good at hiding what he was feeling. Better than the AI.

Although the AI didn’t really _feel_ anything, Young reminded himself.

It just _seemed_ like it was judging him. “Such a role cannot be performed without a neural connection,” it said, as though this obvious conclusion shouldn’t need to be stated.

“I’m sure people are going to be jumping all over themselves for _that_ chance,” Young muttered. _Fun times_ , Eli had said.

The AI eyed him with what might have been disapproval. “I would suggest that you choose someone who cares if he lives or dies, as it is relevant to your own survival. It will need to be someone who is capable of keeping custody of him.”

" _Custody?_ "

"You have this term. It is an accurate one."

"Yeah. Sure. We have that term. I'd love to see you use it to Rush. His two favorite things in the world— being treated like a prisoner, and being treated like a kid."

"You do not like him," the AI said.

"He's a lunatic," Young told it.

It looked away abruptly. “He is not like the rest of you,” it said. It sounded— Young didn’t know what to make of how it sounded. It seemed more like Sheppard suddenly than it had since it started talking, in some really complicated, almost sad way that he didn’t understand.

“Is that why you picked him?” he asked.

But it had vanished without warning. He was standing alone in the corridor, talking to air.

* * *

Young ended up checking in with Brody via radio on his way back to the chair room. He didn’t trust himself to go the bridge; he had a feeling he’d only come across as distracted. He _was_ distracted. He was facing a choice he didn’t want to make. God, couldn’t he even get an hour to enjoy the fact that the ship, according to Brody, was apparently doing what it was supposed to? That they didn’t have to worry about life support failures or having no weapons or not being able to plot their own course? No; instead he had to figure out what to do about _Rush_ , and who was going to hold his mental leash, which Rush was going to hate no matter who it was. And _man_ could Rush hate, when he really put his mind to it. In Wyoming they would’ve said that he was twenty pounds of temper in a ten-pound guy.

Not a lot of people cared if he lived or died, either. At least beyond the practical ramifications. Chloe, for sure— she and Rush seemed to have developed some kind of strange, fragile, math-genius connection, and Rush probably even listened to her and gave a fuck about what she had to say. But Young wasn’t letting Chloe get anywhere near this mess. Eli— Eli liked Rush, Young thought, even if he’d never say so. But Eli also regularly let Rush walk all over him, and that didn’t seem likely to change anytime soon. TJ would volunteer, and she was gentle enough to maybe just about pull it off. But she’d been through _so much_ already, and he just— wanted to spare her. Maybe that made him a bad person, or a bad officer, or maybe that’s why they should never have served together, because his instinct was always to give her a chance to be happy, even it meant the weaker command choice.

Who else was even possible? Camile Wray? She was such a consummate politician; it was hard to know what she really thought about Rush.

Really, all of this was just stalling— buying a couple of minutes to let his body acclimate to the knowledge of what he was going to do. He’d known; he’d known when he was talking to the thing-that-wasn’t-Sheppard; he’d known, he thought, from the first.

He thought he'd known even before then. It was a big knowledge, something tangled up with Sheppard, and with the past night’s dream, and maybe with the struggle on the bridge, and the way he hadn’t held on to Rush, and now Rush was in this situation, even if it was really Rush’s fault, because he’d fought dirty, like always, and kicked Young in the ribs, and lied, and maybe he’d _wanted_ this, like any escape artist wants a good box; but at the same something  _more_ than all of that, too. He didn't know the right words for it yet. He didn't know if he'd ever know what it was, what it meant. They'd never be done, Rush had said. They were, Young thought, bound to one another.

* * *

Eli looked up as Young reentered the chair room. “Wow, that was an hour?”

“No,” Young said shortly. “But I want to hear what you’ve found out.”

“Um, some. Not a whole lot. I was pretty much on point earlier. Rush is definitely connected to the ship now, like in an Ancient cyborg-y tech way; I guess that’s a pretty standard thing, because there’s a word for it, _coirator_ , which is kind of like— I guess _curator_? But not exactly. The thing with the interface is a little more complicated. He seems to need like a sidekick or partner? Someone who can, like, remind him to be a human, so he eats and sleeps and does all the stuff that ships don’t do.”

“Rush already doesn’t do that stuff,” Greer remarked from the corner.

Eli laughed nervously. “Yeah, but here’s the thing, I think that whoever’s supposed to be his sidekick—“

“Please don’t say _sidekick_ ,” Young said.

“—is, like, connected to _him?_  Also in an Ancient cyborg-y tech way? Um. Like. Permanently.”

Young sighed. “That’s pretty much what the AI just told me.”

“You talked to the AI?” Eli looked inappropriately excited. “What did it say? What did it look like? Would it talk to me? Wait— it speaks English? Did it learn English from Rush? Did it, like, absorb Rush’s mind?”

“ _Eli._ ” Young rubbed his temple. “We talked. It wasn’t what I would describe as informative. But I’m pretty much clear on what I have to do.”

There was a brief silence.

“ _You?”_ TJ said, as Eli said, “Uh, is this the AI’s advice? Because it seems kind of—“

Greer said bluntly, “He’s going to kick your ass. Sir.”

Young fixed him with a stern look. “Have a little faith, Sergeant. I’m a colonel in the United States Air Force. He’s a mathematician who weighs a hundred pounds soaking wet.”

“Right,” Greer said skeptically.

“Just—“ Youngwas aware that he was talking to all of them now. “Have a little faith. No one’s going to be happy about this, but we’re going to make do. Right?”

He caught TJ’s eye. She was looking at him with a curious, perceptive expression: a little wary, a little searching, but not as concerned as he’d had cause to expect.

“I know what I’m doing,” he said, though he didn’t, really. “Just— if anything goes wrong. _Which it’s not going to._ But if it does— follow orders from Scott.”

He stepped up to the interface. It was exactly as he’d left it: lit with the outline of a hand, which now struck him as a little bit ghostly. Had anyone else ever put their hand here? Some Ancient a million years ago, programming the equipment? Was he standing, right now, in the exact space where that man had stood? It was an oddly comforting thought. One of the things he’d learned in the Air Force was that when you did dangerous things, you didn’t want to be alone. Another thing he’d learned was how often you ended up alone anyways, in one way or another. It was harder than it looked. It was the hardest thing in the world to not be alone.

He pressed his hand to the panel.

He was aware of his taut breathing.

Then he was

                      _not_

         himself

              andhewas

       not

                                        _here_

     and he was

 _not in his body_ but rather one minor electric manifestation amongst the slow vast pulsing circuits of a larger world, but wait that world is _fast_ in some ways places that he cannot process and he cannot _look_ at it, it makes his head _ache,_ it is not _meant_ for him and in fact it’s _monstrous_ , a big dark alien thing that shrieks and whistles and groans and hums weird atonal music and his impulse is to recoil from it, because he does not _like_ it, because he _is not like it_ , except he sees the shape of Rush’s consciousness there: the bright twitching wires of human neural patterns, so small and so marked-out against the spread of the ship, and he is supposed to _do_ something with those wires, unknot their little tangled branches, which he must be able to do though in his hands (he has no hands) they are as fine as bird’s bones and he is so afraid that he will break one of them, but they do not break, and how could he break them when they are his own neural patterns, when they are his own bones and he is the bird and he is something held alive and flinching in the hands of something dark that has no hands that hurls him upwards and he is

                      gasping

        staggering

bracing himself against the chair.

“Are you all right?” That was TJ. That was— she was— _touching_ his arm which he did not like— she— he _hurt_ and he was dizzy almost to the point of nausea and something was terribly terribly wrong in his _head_ where everything was bursting in swelled-up colors and there was _so much_ noise and—

“Dr. Rush?” TJ said.

“TJ,” Young managed. “Move.”

He touched Rush urgently and found some relief through the touching. Then he was lifting Rush out of the chair, aware of pain that was not his or maybe his but it did not matter; he needed to be away from that darkness that had picked him up and spat him out.

“Put him down!” TJ said. “I think he’s bleeding.”

Young lowered Rush to the floor, wincing as his knee almost refused to complete the motion. TJ knelt beside him, tearing the worn cloth of Rush’s shirt away. Rush’s forearms were— something had happened to them. At best guess, a metal bolt of some kind had cut through the muscle and soft tissue on both sides, several inches above the wrists. TJ was rapidly disinfecting and wrapping the wounds, which were Young’s wounds and _not_ Young’s wounds because blood was not coming out of him, it was his _knee_ that was aching, not his forearms, but at the same time he was _sure_ that TJ’s hands were on him, making him lie still, making him hurt.

“Dr. Rush?” TJ tried again.

Rush was— conscious, or he was conscious in Young, or Young was conscious in him; he was trying to focus on TJ, the blonde aureole of her hair, faintly blurry, which he did not like—

“I think he’s still kind of drugged,” Young said with difficulty.

“Can you talk to me?” TJ asked Rush. She was shining a penlight in his eyes.

Young flinched back from the light.

“I need you to talk to me.”

He was _trying_ to talk, and he did not know why the words weren’t emerging. He was _trying_ — he dragged up a breath and—

“ _Cubi essom?”_ Rush whispered, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to curl onto his side. “ _En Lantead, aute nauim iunievamos? Ne memonaisse potissum—“_ He brought his hands to his head.

Ancient. He was speaking Ancient. He was thinking it, too, Young realized— thinking in the actual words, which Young couldn’t understand, though he was subject to huge frantic waves of panic and confusion, intermingled with floods of memory that made no sense. Maps of galaxies and a fountain in an Ancient courtyard and blue fish swimming under the silver water and someone playing the violin and she said

                    _Sibelius is just so overdone_ and he said But you love it and she said  _No_ and he said Admit it you're a sentimentalist at heart and she said  _Just for that I'm becoming a modernist; I should commission a concerto played all with one note_ and he laughed and                    he was running a fever or no the ache in his bones he had            thought maybe  
                he could still ascend like this but  _eger estque_ the mission   and and and    _en Lantead cum awes_       a musical    fugue the window of a church the stained  
         glass the son the body the suffering the blood she                  _en uervis fuevad et sowa mater quoique_ the light thelight

was too bright but it was not in his eyes it was in Rush's eyes and Young winced, feeling doubly pierced by the penlight and by a Mediterranean sunlight that Rush was summoning up from somewhere in the depths of his mind.

“Eli, can you understand what he’s saying?” he asked, trying to get ahold of Rush’s hands before Rush could hurt himself.

“Um—“ Eli said. “He’s got kind of a strong accent. I don’t think he knows where he is? He wanted to know if he was in Atlantis.”

“ _Neum,”_ Rush said. “ _Scio ute tempos praeteresad_ , _at multua— nimia— nimia indeicia sent—“_

“He says he knows that was a long time ago, I guess, but— something about too much information. _Tu_ , um, _en Fatod est,”_ he said to Rush. “ _Scies, en nauid Fatos?”_

Young didn’t hear the answer; TJ had moved on to Rush’s feet, and her first reaction was to make a noise very much like the one that Young had to swallow when she tried to remove Rush’s left boot.

“More bolts,” Young said tightly.

“Yeah,” she said. “This is… not good, Everett.”

She almost never called him by his name. He wanted to meet her eyes, but she was trying to take Rush’s right boot off, and he had to clench his hands into fists and look away.

“ _Tegei dolhes?”_ Eli asked Rush, touching his shoulder.

“ _Me genwei dolhet_ ,” Rush said vaguely. His eyes had gone unfocused.

Young looked at Eli, waiting for a translation.

Eli’s face was closed and troubled. “I asked him if anything hurt,” he said. “He said his knee. But I’m guessing it’s actually _your_ knee that's hurting him?”


	5. Chapter 5

Hours later, Young lay on a gurney in the Destiny’s infirmary, elevating his wounded leg on a stack of towels. TJ had ended up giving him two of her few remaining tablets of codeine, which were giving the world a warm halation. He hadn’t told her that he needed the pills more for Rush’s injuries than his own. He didn’t want to worry her, and he had a feeling she’d be pretty damn worried if he tried to explain how the link with Rush was making him feel. Which was—

Well. Physically, the pain in Rush’s wrists and feet had receded to a constant dull ache. But _mentally_ , it was like the floorboards of his mind had been pried up, and what lay underneath them was _not_ the solidity of earth, as he’d always supposed, but the kind of cavernous space that housed its own ecosystem. Like the caves that people found in Mexico or China, with underwater lakes and animal species of their own. He could go down into the cave, but he wasn’t sure that was the best course of action. At the same time, it felt like he sort of _was_ in the cave, or at least aware of what was going inside it. He knew the weather systems; he got flashes of geography, faint images, and echoes of text.

Rush was unconscious on another gurney right now, as he’d been for almost five hours— ever since TJ had sedated him. That had been for the best, not only because Rush had been distressing himself to the point of injury, confused and scared and determined to stand up, but because it had given Young a chance to get used to the strange experience of Rush’s presence. He’d thought of the floorboard analogy (or was it a metaphor— he could never keep the two things straight) because he kept feeling like the ground had dropped out from under him. He would let himself get absentminded— thinking about why the AI had looked like Sheppard, trying to figure out what he was going to tell Camile Wray— and then lurch in panic when he was suddenly reminded of the whole vast alien landscape on which his thoughts seemed like only the thinnest crust.

He was sure he’d get used to it.

It was just— _strange._ The was the only word.

He couldn’t think about it. He got anxious when he thought about it too much.

He’d been waiting for Rush to wake up for while now, ever since TJ’s shift had finally ended. (She’d been really reluctant to go, but he’d said, “C’mon, we’ve got the radios for a reason. I’ll let you know if we run into problems. Go get some rest.”) He hadn’t wanted her to be there when the two of them had it out over whatever it was they were going to have it out over. Mostly, the fact that Young had mindmelded the two of them together without Rush’s consent, Young guessed. He was hoping the ship would take some of the blame, considering that what it had done was a hell of a lot more invasive, but somehow he wasn’t sure Rush was going to see it that way.

Maybe it was going to be a nice, quiet, rational conversation. But he didn’t think he’d ever actually had one of those with Rush. So— better to get it out of the way now, with all its histrionics, and then move on.

He tried sort of _pushing_ at the place that he thought of as the floor of his consciousness, where the bright order of his mental house turned to cave. On the other side of the room Rush frowned a little and twitched, but he didn’t wake.

Young effortfully shifted his leg off the stack of towels and climbed off of his gurney, wincing. The codeine didn’t really do much for his knee. At least it made him reasonably calm in a way that was probably going to be useful.

He crossed the room to where Rush lay, now once more unmoving. He wasn’t really sure how this was going to go, but he went ahead and put his hand on Rush’s shoulder, gently shaking him a little.

“Hey,” he said softly. “Rush.”

“No,” Rush said distinctly, but didn’t seem to wake. It figured that his default setting was contrary, even when he was unconscious.

“Yes,” Young said. “C’mon, wake up.” At least Rush seemed to be speaking English? Young mentally prodded at him again.

Then the world tilted, as he was hit by the sense that he was waking up _while already awake_ , which was just— a little much, like having a ghost body attached to his body, just a tiny bit to the left of him, or _underneath_ him, like the cave.

“What the _fuck_ ,” Rush mumbled.

So: definitely speaking English.

Rush squinted up at Young, half-covering his eyes. He looked— confused.

As his brain seemed to slowly come online, the awareness of him that had shivered around the edges of Young’s consciousness for hours dialed itself abruptly up. Before, Young had gotten a vague sense of, for lack of better words, Rush’s geography and weather. Now the weather was rapidly becoming a tropical storm, and he’d lived in Florida, so he knew from tropical storms, and this was one hell of an unstable field of PANIC with sharp winds of INCOMPREHENSION whipping through an atmosphere of PAIN and UNREST, coiling in on themselves in some cyclonic mass of DISTRESS that seemed almost as unstoppable as actual meteorological forces.

“Whoa,” Young said, keeping his hand on Rush’s shoulder. “Let’s just—“

It was hard for him to understand what Rush was thinking, especially over the shrieking of what Rush _felt_ ; all the actual thoughts seemed to be happening in too many dimensions, made up of ultrafast and nonlinear linkages that Young couldn’t follow or even parse. At the same time, those uninterpretable thoughts were pretty distracting, so he didn’t blame himself for not seeing what was coming before Rush reared back and punched him right in the face.

“What the _fuck_ ,” Young said, his hand going to his cheekbone.

Rush was scrambling off the gurney.

“Rush—“ Young began. “I wouldn’t—“

But Rush ignored him. His bare and heavily bandaged feet hit the floor. This had roughly the same effect as a nuclear bomb detonating in his nerve endings. A shock wave of pain rolled through them both, flattening temporarily flattening all cognitive functions.

“Jesus Christ,” Young said, leaning against the gurney. He wondered for a second if he was going to throw up.

Rush, who had collapsed to the deck, seemed to be dealing with the same uncertainty. At least he wasn’t panicking anymore.

When he could breathe again without feeling like he was being knifed from the feet upwards, Young said, “Yeah, so you’ve got a couple of broken metatarsals there, genius.”

“I can hear you in my _head_.” Rush said, slightly muffled by the hand he’d pressed against his mouth.

“Right. The first thing justseemed more pressing, somehow.” He thought about offering Rush a hand, but he didn’t think that was going to accomplish a whole lot. Instead he slid down to sit beside Rush on the deck. “You okay there? TJ has you on some painkillers. I know it doesn’t feel like it.”

“ _Why_ can I hear you in my head?"

Young could tell that Rush was trying to answer his own question, struggling to wrestle a mass of raw and disordered memories into a narrative that would make sense. Here and there an image emerged in a way that was comprehensible to Young— the bluish dark of the control interface room; a burst of mathematics; a soft-faced woman with a mass of untidy fair hair; Young pinning him to the deck, hand hard against his ankle; the glow of circuitry; Young saying, _This is not a negotiation._ Rush seemed to settle rather uncertainly on the last: the conversation they’d had at breakfast, before beginning work in the chair room.

“That was sixteen hours ago,” Young said, not bothering to wait for Rush to verbalize the memory. “You don’t remember anything else?”

Rush’s mouth tightened. He didn’t answer.

“You don’t remember sitting in the interface chair?”

“I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t have chosen to do any such thing.”

“You didn’t really have a choice,” Young said. Hesitantly, he tried focusing on his own memories: Rush up to his ankles in water behind the sparking gold wall of the force field; McKay saying in a low voice, _Not a chance_ ; the chair’s restraints locking around Rush’s wrists and ankles. He wasn’t sure whether Rush could see or understand any of this. And then—

Rush was _in his head_ , an active force that was more like a whirlwind than anything else, wrecking its way through the orderly house of Young’s cognitive structures, ripping those bricks of memory out of their respective walls and turning them inside out in a search for their atomic components. Young’s instinct was to panic and shove Rush back; Rush shouldn’t _be_ here, Rush didn’t _belong_ here, Rush was going to _bring the house down._ He could feel his own panic bleeding over into Rush, seeding another cyclone of emotion, which only made Rush tear into him more frantically.

On instinct, Young found the place that he thought of as his floorboards, or the place where his floorboards should have been, and sort of— crammed Rush back down there, as though he could slam a door over it, or maybe as though he could cover it with a heavy curtain or a tarp.

He breathed. He was alone with himself. He knew that Rush was still _there_ , somewhere, underneath him, but he didn’t have to feel him anymore.

Rush pushed himself up and flinched violently away from Young, his hands at his temples. “What did you—“

“Sorry,” Young said. “But you need to stay out of there.”

“Don’t be fucking _sorry_. I’ve been trying to block _you_ out since I regained consciousness.” In spite of this, he didn’t look too great. He’d shifted to lean his back against the infirmary wall, and his face had gone sallow.

Young eyed him doubtfully. “…Fair enough, I guess. Did you actually get anything from that?”

Rush shook his head, then looked like he regretted the motion. “A force field. Water.”

“Yeah. The ship kind of spooked you to get you into the chair. There was nothing we could do. Apparently it wants a human operator? Needs a human operator, maybe. Um— not _human_. That’s the other part.” He hesitated. He hadn’t even actually considered how Rush might feel about finding out the rest of this stuff. Maybe that had been self-obsessed of him.

“Go on,” Rush said slowly, narrowing his eyes.

“It needs an _Ancient_ operator. So it did the next best thing, and kind of… genetically modified you so you could interface with it.”

Rush didn’t really seem to react to that, which Young found a little worrying. “I see. And how extensive are these modifications?”

“According to Eli, you’re about sixty percent Ancient.”

Once again, Rush failed to respond. He was staring at the deck, idly toying with the torn ends of his shirtsleeves.

“Really?” Young said. “No shock? No horror? Nothing at all?”

Rush ignored him. “Did the Ancients have some previously undocumented telepathic power?”

“What? Oh— uh, no. That’s— apparently now that you’re hooked up to the Destiny, you need someone to keep an eye on you. Not in a _suspicious_ way,” he hastened to add.

“No,” Rush murmured, raising an ironic eyebrow. “Of course not.”

“Look, this is the way the Ancients did it, I guess.” He shrugged. “One person mindmelds with the ship, and someone else has to mindmeld with that person, so they don’t get lost in the CPU.”

“And this person had to be _you_ ,” Rush said. His tone was suspiciously devoid of emotion.

Young felt a defensive flare of anger. “Yeah,” he said. “The way things worked out— it did.”

Rush nodded. His face was still closed. “Thank you,” he said. “For the explanation.”

“You can talk to Eli about it later,” Young said awkwardly. He couldn’t tell if Rush was being sincere, or if that had been a very subtle insult that Young hadn’t picked up on. “He can tell you about it in a lot more detail. He’s got access to the whole database now. Everything in the ship unlocked.”

“I know,” Rush said. “I can tell.”

He didn’t offer any more information. Young didn’t ask him for any.

They sat in silence for a while.

Abruptly Young stood, walked over to Rush, and held his hand out. “Come on,” he said.

Rush looked up at him, expressionless. For a long moment he didn’t move. Then, reluctantly, he reached up and let Young pull him to his feet, both of them staggering under the shock of their separate injuries. It was already odd, Young thought, not to feel Rush’s pain. But he didn’t know if he could have gotten Rush back to the gurney without the mental block. It was a lot for him to manage with just the ache in his knee.

“Do you need anything?” he asked Rush when Rush seemed to be settled.

“No,” Rush said shortly. He stared fixedly at the wall, hugging his arms to his chest.

Young sighed. He went and filled a cup with water, then grabbed an extra blanket from the stack that was folded on a chair. He pitched the blanket at Rush— who caught it, startled— and set the cup of water within reach. “You’re a lot of work,” he said. “You know that, right?”

“It’s been mentioned.”

“I’ve got to go call TJ and tell her you’re awake.”

“Wait.”

Young paused.

“Does she know? About this?” Rush gestured briefly between them in a way that was both minimalist and expressive.

“Yeah, she knows. Her, Eli, and Greer were all there. I kind of figured that otherwise we’d keep it under wraps.”

Rush had averted his gaze from Young. “Do you suppose we can just… leave it blocked?”

Young studied him. Rush still looked pretty unsteady. Young wasn’t sure what had happened when he’d first put up the block, but he thought that it hadn’t been great for Rush. Of course, Rush being Rush, it was impossible to just point-blank ask him. He’d probably have to practically torture Rush to find out if he was in pain. Which seemed like kind of a circular strategy, so he picked a different one. “I think we’re both tired,” he said carefully, “and maybe we shouldn’t mess with it too much.”

Rush nodded without saying anything.

Young carefully peeled the block back. At once he could feel Rush’s weather— fragile, cloudy, and remote— and the gnawing, spiking pain in his feet. It didn’t disorientate him as much as it had. He didn’t feel that sense of vertiginous lurching. Rush definitely seemed more comfortable with the block down, too; something in his face untightened, like he was finally breathing.

Young grabbed his radio. “Hey, TJ? You still up?”

“Yes.” She picked up immediately, but the tone of her voice told him that she had been sleeping.

Rush gave Young a faintly amused look at that thought.

“Oh, _what?_ ” Young said to him. He could tell that Rush had picked up on his affair with TJ, and that it was news to Rush. “If you weren’t in on that piece of gossip, you need more friends.” To TJ, he said, “Rush is awake.” Boy, was he.

“I’ll be there in a minute,” TJ said.

Young clicked the radio off and tried to practice thinking of nothing— definitely not TJ’s voice when she was just waking up, or the way she looked with her hair spread out against a pillow, or the feel of that hair under his fingers. Nothing, he thought. Nothing.

“It won’t work,” Rush said. “Thinking of nothing. It never does. You should focus on something innocuous instead.”

“What, you’re giving me advice now?” He voice came out sharper than he intended. He always told himself he was over TJ, that it didn’t bother him anymore, that he didn’t mind talking about it, and he was always wrong. “ _You’re_ trying to be _helpful?_ That’s a new one.”

“Oh, fuck off.” Rush turned on his side, facing away from Young. As though in revenge, he turned a vicious, focused concentration on the pain in his feet and wrists. Young considered pulling the block back into place, but there was at least a chance that was what Rush wanted, and Young refused to be manipulated. He remembered very loudly why he didn’t like Rush— it was easy to feel sorry for him when he was freaking out or unconscious, but the minute he woke up he was right back to his old tricks, treating you like a rat he was planning to run through interesting mazes, or a chess piece with a tiny wooden brain.

He could tell Rush heard him, but predictably he got no response. Rush was pretending to be asleep. As though that would work for either of them, from now on.

Outside, TJ’s footsteps were approaching. She was whistling a little under her breath, which she did sometimes when she was trying to fight off exhaustion— little nonsense songs without real melodies that she made up as she went.

Rush had heard that, too. Young felt a twinge of anger. He bent his head, scrubbing a hand through his hair, and tried to swallow the feeling down. He checked his watch: past midnight. He felt like it had been three years since morning.

It was shaping up to be another long day, he thought.

* * *

He slept at last around two AM, having left Rush to terrorize TJ, or maybe TJ to terrorize Rush (the balance of power between them seemed to shift depending on how badly Rush was injured, though he was never quite sure in which direction). For four hours he managed a dreamless kind of blackout in which he could not know whether he was alone. When he woke to the chime of his alarm, he could tell that Rush was sleeping. It was a state subtly different to unconsciousness in its feel— Rush was dreaming in a long strange stream of math that Young couldn’t make sense of, with interruptions in which he was walking down an Ancient corridor, inspecting a long series of doors whose locks were holes that you had to put your hand into, like mystery boxes at a county fair. Rush wanted to open the doors, but he was afraid of what was behind them, afraid to put his hand through the locks.

Young ended up feeling like he had eavesdropped on something that was personal. Something in the dream felt like a private fear. At least Rush didn’t know, he guessed. And it served him right, at any rate, for knowing about TJ.

Maybe they would have to get used to knowing each other’s dreams.

The main item on his agenda was dealing with his report to Homeworld Command. He was supposed to deliver it in a few hours, and he didn’t think that was going to fly. He had no idea what happened if you linked up your brain to someone else’s and then used a device that swapped your brain out with someone else’s brain— well, not literally, but the hell if he knew how the communication stones worked— and he had a feeling that he didn’t want to find out. But Telford had put him in a tight spot with the threat of involuntary replacement. He had to deliver the report somehow.

He mulled that over in the back of his mind as he headed to the supply room. He had an errand to run, and he wanted to get it done before Rush woke up.

Spare uniforms, like spare anything else on the Destiny, were hard to come by. All of their desert fatigues where in common circulation, and most of what was set aside had belonged to crew members who’d died. Or—

Who had been killed.

Young knew the precise location of the storage crate he wanted. After all, he had packed it himself.

Inside, Hunter Riley’s black uniform lay neatly folded. Young stood and looked at it for a moment before he carefully lifted the jacket out. He smoothed down the letters that spelled Riley’s name. Pulling out his pocketknife, he cut the name badge off the jacket, leaving a clean black rectangle where it had been. He held the name badge in his palm as though it weighed more than a scrap of fabric. A lot more. He made sure it place it gently back in the crate. He took the jacket and a pair of boots that had grown slightly dusty, though their bootlaces still showed signs of use.

He closed the crate. That was all he had wanted.

He nodded to the sergeant on duty as he left the room.

A few minutes later, he limped through the infirmary doors to find TJ hunched over her computer terminal. She looked up at him with bleary eyes. He should’ve let her sleep last night, he thought, instead of radioing her— but it would have been another one of those bad command decisions.

“How are you doing?” she asked.

Young shrugged evasively. “I came by to see how _he_ was doing.”

“He’s okay. He’s sleeping.”

“I know.”

“You can tell?” She studied him curiously. “We should talk about the implications of this mental connection.”

“Maybe later,” Young said. “I’m more interested in what he’s looking at physically, long-term.”

TJ sighed. “His wrists are going to be fine, as far as I can tell. The feet— well, if he’d stay off them, but he’s not going to, is he?”

“Probably not,” Young confirmed. “And the genetic changes?” That was what he’d really wanted her to tell him.

“It’s really too soon to say. Based on what we learned with Chloe, these things take time to propagate through the body. It’s just— yeah. Watch and wait.”

He wasn’t good at watching and waiting. He knew that and she knew that. He saw her mouth curve and he knew they were both thinking the same thing. That made him sad for a minute, and he saw that she knew that too, and that maybe she was also a little bit sad.

You could have a whole conversation, he thought, without speaking to someone. It was like another language, a private language. He never got to practice that kind of thing. He always seemed to screw up as soon as he got the chance.

He placed the boots and clothing he’d brought on her desk, along with an electric razor from his quarters. “Well, in the meantime,” he said, “I found him some shoes and a shirt. His were pretty trashed, and I don’t think he actually has any others. Also—“ He pointed to the razor. “Tell him he needs to shave. I cannot handle the beard.”

“This is not going to be a thing,” TJ said.

“What, the shaving? Like— at least down to ‘scruffy.’ Not this hermit thing he’s got going on.”

“You know what I mean. I’m not your go-between.”

“Just a little bit,” Young said, with a solicitous smile that he knew she found charming. “C’mon, I can’t deal with him right now.”

“Then we’re going to talk about this mental connection.”

“Later,” he promised. “I swear. IOU. I’d write it down if we had paper.”

“I’m keeping a mental list,” she called after him as he left. “Of everything you owe me! I’m tacking it to my mental wall!”

He didn’t want to think about everything he owed her. He had a feeling it was a lot.

* * *

Young decided to take a risk with his report to Homeworld Command, and have Greer deliver it for him. The problem with this strategy— well, one of the many ways in which this strategy wasn’t ideal— was that Greer would have to lie about why Young wasn’t delivering it himself. Greer was the most likely to be willing to be lie; he had that quality, usually fatal in soldiers but oddly suited to Stargate Command, of being more loyal to the people and ideas that he deemed worthy of his efforts than to any particular set of rules. But it wasn’t fair to ask him, or to put his job on the line, and the whole thing made Young uncomfortable.

But Greer was up for it (“If it’s going to piss Colonel Telford off, sir— excuse my language—“) and Young spent an anxious two hours waiting for him to get back, radioing with the science team regarding what they’d found so far in the ship’s database, and trying not to pay attention to the drift and ebb of Rush’s dreams.

When Rush wasn’t dreaming in math, he tended to be dreaming in Ancient— which helped with the not-paying-attention, but struck Young as odd. What had the ship _done_ to him? He’d known Rush was fluent in Ancient, but he’d never heard the man speak it until he got out of the chair. Now Rush was having confused flashes in which he seemed to be teaching college lectures in the language, or once in which _Telford_ , of all people, was talking to him in it: _Neod conlugtre_ , Telford was saying, gazing at Rush with a peculiar intensity in his black eyes, wreathed in an uneasy kind of halo, his mouth fixed in a tight line. _Neod conlugtre, Nick_. Young didn’t know what that meant, but there was something about the tone of the dream that he didn’t like, and he was relieved when it descended into math once more.

He was even more relieved when Greer returned from Earth and reported that Telford had been visibly annoyed by Young’s failure to show up for the briefing, but that the others present at the meeting had seemed satisfied.

He was so relieved, in fact, and in such a good mood, that he went ahead and gave the okay for the science team to start exploring the newly accessible parts of the ship. That was a risk— he’d never managed to beat the _look-don’t-touch_ principle into them, and they seemed to think it was their duty as civilians to disobey orders— but it was also possible they’d find something genuinely useful. And having whole unexamined, fully-powered-up compartments might be even more of a risk.

By seventeen hundred hours, he’d fielded several overexcited radio hails from Volker about power generators and machines that no one seemed to understand, and had to talk Brody down from activating a box that he seemed convinced was some sort of Ancient kettle. “It definitely facilitates the transfer of large quantities of heat in some fashion,” Brody insisted, and Young said, “That sounds like something we don’t want to experiment with.” Scientists. God. Some days he didn’t know why he’d joined the Stargate program.

That was around the time Rush woke up and, of course, immediately decided to stand, which pretty much put paid to Young’s ability to function. He _kept_ trying to stand, on and off, for the next couple of hours, until Young, irritated, finally figured out how to partially block him out. That was more like leaving a window open just a crack between them, with Young retaining the option of slamming it down. That way he still got a sense of what Rush was up to, but he didn’t practically hit the floor every time Rush limped over to harass TJ. _Damn_ but the man got restless when confined to a room.

Rush seemed to be trying to block _him_ out as well, but having much less success. Young had a vague sense of the blocks Rush kept half-constructing— ramshackle, weak, and haphazard barricades that took all his mental energy to keep intact. The minute his mind went elsewhere, they fell to pieces. And any sustained kind of focus exhausted him. Young didn’t know why he found it so much easier than Rush, but he could tell that Rush was _not happy_ about it.

Maybe that was why Young ended up back in his quarters at twenty-three hundred hours without having actually seen or talked to Rush all day. He’d been able to keep tabs on Rush’s— well, he couldn’t stop thinking about it as _weather_ — so he knew that nothing dramatic had happened with him, and it was pretty clear that Rush wanted him as far away as possible.

Still—

Out of curiosity, he sat on the edge of his bed, closed his eyes, and threw the window between them open, concentrating on the place inside him that was Rush. He could feel the two of them moving into a kind of easy, natural alignment. He was stepping  _almost into_  that phantom body below him. He was stretching his hands into its hands. He was—

He was balancing a laptop on his thighs, the heat almost uncomfortable but not quite. He could smell the infirmary’s oddly Medieval, faintly herbal scent, like the Oxford Botanical Gardens in the autumn. He was attempting to model the frequency changes in Destiny’s shield harmonics. The screen in front of him was filled with lines of code.

Rush stopped typing abruptly and flinched, almost a full-body shudder, as though he was trying to shove off a coat he was wearing on the inside. A wave of //?// ran through him, like a wordless question. He didn’t understand what was happening.

//Oh,// Young said, but didn’t say, the words communicating themselves in a kind of focused burst from himself to Rush. //Sorry. I didn’t expect—// 

//Colonel Young?// Rush’s own mental… projection, for lack of a better word, sounded exactly like his physical voice.

//Yeah. Just me.//

//Ah,// Rush said, his tone sharp and ugly. //Of course. Just you, and not one of the many other crew members who’ve seen fit to insert themselves underneath my skin.//

There was an unpleasant image attached to that, a vague sense of Young actually having peeled back Rush’s skin, blurry and painful memories of Rush, half-sedated, with his ribcage split open, a Nakai transmitter next to his naked heart, and he had been thinking about Young then; it had been Young’s fault then, too, Young’s order—

The violence of the emotions attached made Young feel slightly sick.

//I just wanted to check in and see if you were all right,// Young said defensively.

//Fuck off.// Rush resumed typing with sharp, vicious fingers. He was trying to redirect his thoughts into Destiny, the orderly mathematical shifts that governed the shields like chord progressions, the ship cool and clear and lattice-like in his head. He could feel the infirmary around him, Young realized, in some way that Young couldn’t quite access— the dark walls and the dim glow of the lights like a living creature around his body, one that breathed and pulsed with secret circulations, that— // _Fuck off_ ,// Rush sent again, more ferociously, trying to force Young away with him without much effect.

//Jesus,// Young said, stung. //Sorry it’s such a crime to care how you’re doing.//

//Don’t be disingenuous. This is a functional evaluation. You don’t give a fuck how I am.//

//Do you ever get tired of assuming the worst about other people?//

//It’s proven a highly practical strategy.//

//That’s awfully pessimistic.//

//Perhaps you should consider that you’re currently trespassing in my body without my permission.//

//Stop being such a drama queen. It’s not like I’m mind-controlling you.// But Young drew back a little, clumsily, still feeling out what he was doing.

Rush said, voice dripping with disdain, //As if you could.// But there was a flicker of uneasiness underneath the words, verging into a vague, unfocussed panic.

//Rush, I’m not going to—“ Young began, thinking it was probably worth addressing the thought.

// _Get the fuck out of my head_ ,// Rush shot at him, with a violence that Young thought neither of them had expected. //Or do you want me to _drop in_ on you? Maybe when you’re thinking about Tamara? Or your wife? Sorry; I mean ex-wife.//

//Jesus, all right. I’ll leave you alone. Fuck you.// Young thought spitefully that the reason Rush assumed the worst had nothing to do with practicality; it was because Rush couldn’t imagine what it was like to care about another person, or expect someone else to care about you in return. It was a piece of human machinery he lacked, one of the many ways he was basically defective as a person.

Rush sent something wordless at him, a kind of roiling tidal wave of fury that was probably intended to force Young out of his head. Instead it just drowned Young for a moment, murky and savage and panicked, smashing him against a rocky edge of thinly hidden despair.

Young pulled back on instinct, blocking Rush out again. His own quarters came back into view. He stared at them, startled for a moment by the deadness of their construction, in contrast to Rush’s more animate sense of Destiny. 

After a while he stood and walked to the far wall, touching his hand against it. He felt sick from the whole interaction.

Sometimes he thought he wasn’t fair to Rush. At other times, he thought he was falling right into the traps Rush laid for him, letting Rush manipulate him into feeling... whatever way. Rush  _wanted_  to be hated; he provoked it in people. Young… didn’t want to do what Rush wanted him to do. But somehow he always ended up there. Rush knew how to play him.

He sighed, and covered his face with his hands.

He wished Rush knew how to block him.

He wished… he wished that having a literal mental connection had given him any insight into Rush.

* * *

It took him a long time to fall asleep that night, and he had no dreams that he wanted to remember. Around oh four hundred, his radio went off, and he groped for it with the dazed uncoordination of sleep debt.

“Young.”

“Colonel, it’s TJ. We have a problem.”

He drove his fist into the pillow beside him. He could guess at the problem. “Rush?”

“He—" She hesitated. "Seems to have gone missing.”

"What do you mean,  _missing_?" Young asked tiredly. "We're on a goddamn spaceship."

"I mean he's not in the infirmary," she said with a hint of an edge. "I turned my back for a second, and—"

"Right." He shut his eyes. "I'll take care of the problem."

He was tempted to throw the radio across the room when he'd signed off, but he resisted. 

 _I don't know what you were expecting,_ some part of him commented wryly.  _When you're an escape artist, every goddamn thing looks like a box._


	6. Chapter 6

Young shrugged his uniform on wearily, trying to force his sleep-dumb mind into action.

Rush had to have known that he'd be able to solve this particular problem real fast. So did Rush _want_ to be found, in which case dragging Young out of bed and on an early morning wild goose chase was presumably part of the plan, or had he bet that Young wouldn’t have the guts to take down his block after their last conversation? —In which case Young was damn well going to take down the block. God, maybe both were true, though; there was no winning with Rush sometimes.

“You are,” he breathed to his silent quarters, “a _lot_ of work.”

He had no choice, really; he went ahead and pushed the window of the block open, letting himself shift into alignment with Rush. He was struck by a collection of strange angles that refused to coherently resolve. It took him a long time to realize that he was looking at an unfamiliar room from the perspective of someone lying flat on his back. Dim blue light was emerging from hidden apertures in the ceiling, and the deck was warmly purring with the well-powered vibrations of the ship.

A tape measure that Rush had been holding snapped into its metal housing with enough force to hurt Rush’s wrist.

//Is your own mind,// Rush snapped, // _so_ uninteresting that you feel the need to periodically invade mine?//

//Give me a break,// Young said shortly. It was four in the morning, and he was tired, and he had enough on his plate without this. //You’re supposed to be in the infirmary.//

//The infirmary can get fucked.//

// _Excuse_ me? Do you need me to remind you how many times TJ’s saved your life?//

Rush ignored him. He was marking something on a length of metal with an actual Sharpie. Young hadn’t thought they had any of those left. He could feel Rush shoving at their mental connection, trying to force him outwards. Rush wasn’t succeeding in doing much more than leaking tension, anger, and frustration all over the insides of their heads.

//Rush,// Young began. He couldn’t tell if he was more frustrated by Rush’s obstinacy or by the fact that Rush was so _bad_ at this.

Rush hurled the Sharpie savagely against a wall. //Can you not take a fucking hint? Leave me the _fuck_ alone!//

//I’m pretty sure my job is to _not_ leave you alone!//

//I won’t have you as my self-appointed keeper,// Rush hissed at him. He was getting angrier, his mental weather dark and prickling like the low-pressure air right before a storm. //You think you own me just because the fucking ship let you lock us together? You think that means you get to have me on a fucking leash?//

//No one’s saying that,// Young said, trying too late to turn his voice calmer. //Look, I think you need to calm down.//

//I’m perfectly fucking calm!//

//You’re really not.// It wasn’t like he couldn’t tell, he thought, and then realized that Rush had picked up on that observation.

//Then maybe you should stay out of my fucking head!// Rush threw at him. His thoughts had become semi-hysterical, ricocheting off the walls of their shared mind-space, gathering destructive force and speed. There wasn’t even any emotion attached to them, just a very pure and white-hot refusal to _be locked in he would not be locked in he would not be held down not by anyone it was laughable that they ever ever thought they could lock him in because he would not be held down or back or in any conceivable temporospatial position and there was no lock that he would not break because he would not be locked in_ and the strength of that refusal built whiter and hotter and purer until Young had to look away from it, and he didn’t see what Rush did exactly, except that Rush did—

_Something._

It was like Rush had tried to hitch a ride on a meteoroid straight into a nearby planet’s atmosphere, hoping that the ensuing explosion would tear them apart.

It very nearly did.

Young was vaguely aware of hitting the deck— of stitches splitting all along his knee. His head was— nothing. He could not— speak. There was only— light and heat and air. And— the need to _hold on_ to a thing he had no name for. He did not know— why he had to hold on. Just. Holding. Till— his breath was metal at the back of his throat. His heart— a fist clenched around one object. Every muscle— convulsing.

Even then.

Rush—

Lost consciousness for a second, and it was only then that Young knew— _Rush_ was the—

He drew a ragged breath. Or they both did.

Blood had seeped through his pantleg at the knee. That was— he was Young, and that was his blood. Warm under his fingers.

Rush had been— that detonation. Was Rush.

//What the _fuck_ ,// Young said. He could barely— like shouting after a gut punch.

Rush didn’t answer. He was— curled on the dimly lit floor. Just— breathing.

//What the fuck were you trying to do— kill us both?//

“No,” Rush whispered aloud. He was thinking of— a smear of stars out a starship window. A fugue in D-Minor. The ridge of a subcutaneous transmitter under the skin. Circuits. A cheap lock on a bedroom door. The taste of bitumen. Nothing that suggested meaning. //No, I wasn’t—//

//Well, you came pretty goddamn close!//

//You should have let me go.//

//Go _where?_ Inside the CPU? The ship? I thought you were supposed to be a genius. How hard is it to get it through your fucking head that you can’t survive in there?//

Rush didn’t say anything.

//Please tell me that you wouldn’t rather die than have to put up with me,// Young said, the anger dropping out of his tone. He couldn’t tell if he felt sick from the aftermath of that explosive dislocation or if he just… felt sick. He hadn’t thought that Rush hated him that much.

//You’re giving yourself too much credit.// Rush closed his eyes. After a minute he tried to sit. His weather had gone very flat and tired, almost defeated.

//Look,// Young said, and then stopped. He didn’t trust himself to not set Rush off again somehow. But he also had a feeling that if Rush thought he was being managed, _that_ would set him off again. Figuring he could use pain to mask most of his intentions, Young stood and inspected his knee. He’d definitely popped some stitches. He could feel Rush flinch. //Look,// he said again. //Let’s start over. I’m sorry that you don’t want me in your head. TJ was worried about you. You vanished in the middle of the night.//

//And you thought I might be indulging in a spot of sabotage.//

Young sighed and limped over to lean against his sofa. //Actually, I would’ve said you were too damn worn out. Though now I’m pretty sure I was underestimating you.//

//Yes,// Rush said, sounding faintly satisfied. //You were.//

At least that had cheered him up. //Where are you, anyway? How’d you even get so far from the infirmary? There’s no way that you could’ve walked.//

//Oh, no?// Rush sent Young a brutal memory of half-walking and half-dragging himself through darkened corridors, his hands clenching the molded walls for support. His jaw had been set hard against the impulse to make any involuntary noises— Young didn’t think Rush had meant to send this part— and he hadn’t. Not a single noise.

//Rush,// Young said, a kind of pained admonition that escaped him. //Someone would’ve helped you. _I_ would’ve helped you.//

//Not necessary.// Rush had pulled his datapad into his lap and was coding with a busy ferocity that Young though was probably meant as a defense against further conversation.

//Tell me where you are. I’m coming down there.//

//Also not necessary.//

//Come on. Tell me where you are.//

Rush sighed. //You’re a much more persistent person than first impression would suggest.// But he sent Young a mental map of his location.

Young backed off from his mind and focused on his own surroundings. He was going to have to rebandage his knee, he thought, to walk— and then when he'd done so, he still wasn’t sure he could manage. How the fuck had Rush walked on broken feet? The man had a will of iron, and that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. One of the skills you had to learn when you were out in the field was knowing when to push yourself and when to stop. If you half-killed yourself just to prove that you could do it, you’d have nothing left when the bastards really came for you.

And this was Rush just proving he could do it, Young was pretty sure. There were no signs of emergency in the ship. The corridors were quiet, engines humming serenely. When Young had gotten close to the room marked on Rush’s map, a door slid open, spilling light out into the hallway. He wondered if Rush could tell he was there, or if the Destiny was keeping track of him.

Inside the room was something that looked like an Ancient machine shop of some kind: table saw, conveyor belt, welding equipment, sheets of metal, tools. Rush was seated on a stool, holding a dark blue helmet to his face and welding two pieces of metal together with a pale and almost soundless flame. When Young knocked against the doorway, Rush glanced over and lowered the helmet.

TJ must have followed through with playing go-between, because Rush had definitely been downgraded to “scruffy” from “hermit.” Not even a military uniform could make him look, well, military— Riley’s jacket was too big for him, and he’d had to roll up the sleeves— but he was a little bit tidier, and he’d lost his torn-up white shirt. Unfortunately for Rush, one side-effect was that he looked a lot less intimidating. When Rush was cultivating the style of someone who hunted humans for sport, it was easy to forget what a small guy he actually was.

He must have picked up that thought, because he fixed Young with a long hard glare, picked up the helmet, and turned away.

“Oh, come on,” Young said. “It’s five in the morning. Give it a rest.”

Rush resumed welding.

“You need any help?” Young asked coming to stand beside Rush. “Your hands are killing me, you know.”

“I’m almost finished.”

In fact, he’d already finished one of whatever he was working on. Young picked it up and hefted it from one hand to the other. It was a basic but pretty sturdy example of a forearm crutch.

“You know that Eli would’ve come up with a way for you to get around,” he said.

“Yes. I’m sure he would’ve.”

“Not one for relying on the kindness of strangers, are you?”

Rush paused in his welding, but didn’t say anything.

“What, I don’t even get credit for having read a book?”

Rush set the helmet down and examined his welding closely. “It’s a play. One doesn’t read plays.”

“Not a lot of theater in rural Wyoming. But we had a great library system.” He didn’t mention it was also a movie. He wasn’t going to make it easy for Rush. “Anyway, you’re a math nerd. I thought you were supposed to turn your nose up at literature.”

“What a very American assumption.” Rush snatched the other crutch from Young. “Were you aware you’re bleeding?”

“Yeah. I noticed. It’ll stop.”

“Not if you keep falling on it.” Rush’s tone was snide, but his weather was chastened.

Young raised an eyebrow. “As apologies go, I’ve had better.”

“I”m not apologizing.”

“Yeah, but you want to,” Young said.

In response, Rush glared at him and stood, balancing his weight on the crutches.

The pain was nauseating, but that was pretty much par for the course. Young took a deep breath and tried not to focus on his awareness of what, exactly, Rush was doing to his feet and arms. “And you walked here _how?_ ” he asked.

“Block me if you don’t like it,” Rush snapped, and levered his way adroitly towards the doorway, moving with a neat and savage limp. So much for any hope that he might be out of commission.

“God, you’re going to be a menace on those things, aren’t you,” Young said, following him.

Behind them, the lights and power in the room shut off, and as they cleared the doorway, the door slid shut with a neat click. The lights in the hallway adjusted themselves to a comfortable yellow glow.

“Are you doing that?” Young asked, a little unnerved.

“Doing what?”

Young nodded over his shoulder at the door.

Rush paused and frowned, as though he hadn’t even noticed. “I don’t know. I’m not doing it _consciously_.”

“Great,” Young muttered. That was just what he needed. A Rush who, for all he knew, could subconsciously influence the ship. _That_ wasn’t a disaster waiting to happen. God only knew what was going on in Rush’s subconscious; Young would bet dollars to donuts it was pretty fucking messed-up.

He glanced over at Rush, feeling suddenly guilty. He hoped Rush hadn’t heard that. He wasn’t going soft or anything, but there was a difference between being willing to punch a guy in the face and wanting him to know that you were pretty sure he’d had a fucked-up life, or childhood, or whatever. There was something unfair about the latter thing.

But Rush showed no reaction. He seemed to be thinking mostly about some problem involving crystalline arrays.

“TJ is exceptionally pissed at you, by the way,” Young warned Rush as they neared the infirmary.

Rush made a sound that eloquently communicated how little he cared. But he had the grace to at least look guilty when TJ proved to be waiting for them, standing inside the infirmary doors with her arms crossed, looking like a woman who hadn’t gotten any sleep— primarily because of Rush— over the past two nights.

“Yes yes,” Rush said, sighing. “I’m aware.”

TJ motioned him onto a gurney. “You know you shouldn’t be walking yet, right? Crutches or no crutches.”

Rush response was a rather noncommittal shrug.

“If you can’t handle that, I’d be happy to sedate you.”

“Empty threat,” Rush said dismissively. “You wouldn’t dare waste the resources.”

//I’d watch yourself,// Young shot at him, watching TJ’s expression grow thunderous. //You’re about ten words from getting dropped like a rock.//

“I wouldn’t _dare_?” TJ said.

Young said mildly, “I’d authorize it.”

//Traitor,// Rush sent. Out loud, he said, “I’ll stay here for twenty-four hours, at which point I’ll go back on shift.”

“Forty-eight hours,” TJ countered. “Plus, you give me your word that you won’t sneak off.”

“Thirty hours.”

“Thirty-six."

“With continuous access to a laptop.”

“Done.” TJ held out her hand, and Rush shook it.

Young stared at them. “Is this a usual thing for you guys?”

Rush gave him a cool look. “I think Colonel Young reinjured his knee,” he told TJ. “You might want to take a look at it.”

//Thanks so much. Now who’s the traitor?// Young snapped.

“God, what did you do, _fall_ on this?” TJ asked, when she’d gotten a good look at the injury.

“Uh— yeah, kind of,” Young admitted. He didn’t look at Rush.

“I’m going to have to restitch it.” She was already opening a bottle of ethanol. “Sorry.”

“For what?” Young asked, as she upended the bottle over his knee.

Ah.

For that.

He could see, through his suddenly swimming eyes, Rush clench his hands on the sides of the gurney, biting his lip to hold off a flinch. Young pulled the block up. He wasn’t a sadist; it was hard for him to look at his own pain reflected in Rush’s face.

“So,” TJ said casually, opening one of the suture kits and threading a needle. “Since you two happen to be stuck here with nowhere to go, we might as well discuss this mental connection.”

Young gritted his teeth as the needle entered his skin. “I get the feeling we may have walked into a trap,” he said to Rush.

TJ ignored him.

“There’s nothing to discuss,” Rush said. He made an offhand gesture. “We’re able to block it.”

“Really?” TJ said, looking doubtful.

Young, who had started to speak, shut his mouth.

“We’re blocking it right now. You think I want to feel that?” He pointed to where TJ was putting the last stitches in Young’s knee.

TJ squinted suspiciously at Young. He hoped she put his expression down to the pain. He didn’t want to worry her, and he definitely didn’t want her trying to act like some kind of headshrink, but also didn’t like lying to her, and that was more-or-less what Rush was getting away with. True, he hadn’t _actually_ lied, but he definitely also hadn’t given the impression that being locked into a mental connection with Young was so distressing to him that he’d panicked an hour ago and practically killed them both.

“So what happens if one of you gets injured?” TJ asked.

Rush shrugged. “I was unconscious for most of yesterday. Colonel Young seemed to suffer no ill effects.”

“And what about the other way around?”

“That’s less clear. We’ll just have to wait and see,” Young said, because the expression on Rush’s face suggested he was about to outright lie.

He couldn’t believe TJ was buying Rush’s disingenuousness so far. To him, it would’ve been obvious that Rush was telling less than the truth. He was just… way too pleasant, with a kind of painted-on, pseudo-human demeanor. It was the kind of shit that he’d always been trying to pull back on Icarus Base. Trying to convince people that he was _like them_ , which he wasn’t good at. Seeing it now still kind of set Young’s teeth on edge, and not just on TJ’s behalf, but because— he didn’t know why, exactly. He’d’ve felt good if he could’ve claimed that what he wanted was for Rush to just be himself. But in fact some part of him wanted to yell at Rush, _It’s not that hard! Stop acting and just be more normal!_ Just be kinder, just be less calculating, just be happier, or more tired, or homesick, or sad.

The boat had pretty much sailed on normal for Rush, though.

It was an unexpectedly depressing thought. He glanced over at Rush and found him staring at the ceiling. He was glad he’d already blocked him out of his head.

“TJ, I’m pretty beat,” he said abruptly, standing. “I’m going grab some sleep before my shift starts.”

She nodded. She was putting her supplies away.

Young hesitated in the doorway, not sure if he should say something to Rush. Rush was ignoring him. Young could have taken the block off, of course, to get Rush’s attention, or to sense what Rush was thinking about, or just as a signal, like— hey, I’m leaving for the night, let me know if you need anything. Although that was a ridiculous thought. So he left the block up, because he was feeling ridiculous.

He slept thinly that night, and he didn’t know why. He had only, he guessed, his own dreams to blame.

* * *

In the morning his door chime woke him at just past oh nine hundred. The block in his mind seemed to have disintegrated, and when he climbed out of bed, the sudden jolt of pain in his knee reached Rush. Young could feel his full attention for a moment before his focus shifted back to using coupled nonlinear oscillators to modify the Destiny’s shield frequencies.

Eli was waiting at the door. “Hey,” he said. “You don’t look so hot.”

“Long night,” Young said, dragging a hand through his hair. “What can I do for you? Come on in.”

“I’m supposed to report to McKay today,” Eli said, “using the communication stones, and—“

Young made a quick, frantic silencing gesture, as though Rush were actually in the room with them. He pulled the block between him and Rush back into place, feeling a shock of startled awareness from Rush just as he started to do so, then— nothing but the blank surface of the block.

“Sorry,” he said to Eli. “Just—“ he motioned next to his head. “I don’t want Rush to know about this.”

“Ye-ah,” Eli said slowly. “Um, maybe it’s not the best idea to start a conspiracy that excludes the guy you’re in constant telepathic communication with?”

“It’s not _constant_ ,” Young said. “And he needs to not find out that there’s a possibility the SGC might be able to pull him back to Earth, because I think we can both agree that his reaction to that would be _not desirable._ ”

Eli looked away and back. “You think he’s going to destroy the communication terminal.”

“Cutting off our only contact with Earth.”

“That might not be…” Eli trailed off, looking careful. “That might not be the worst solution?”

“That is not a solution, Eli. It is not on the list. It’s nowhere near the list.”

If they lost contact with Earth, they lost their families. They lost doctors, technical expertise, encouragement, a whole team of people focused on bringing them home. They lost the _possibility_ of home. The blow to morale would be enormous. And all of that just to protect Rush, who had gotten them stuck here in the first place.

“He might not actually _destroy_ it,” Eli said. “Just— tamper with it a little. Plus, you can _read his mind_ now. Shouldn’t you be able to stop him?”

“You would think that,” Young said dryly. “Unfortunately, my track record is not great at this point.”

Eli looked away again. “Okay. Well. I’ll talk to McKay. I actually came by to see if there was anything specific you wanted me to ask him.”

“Just— find out as much as you can about the communication stones. If they do have this grab job set up, you’re going to need to try and stop it.”

“Great. That sounds really easy.”

“I know,” Young said. “I know. But—“

“Yeah, yeah. I get it.” But he seemed dejected, and somehow obscurely older than usual. He started to turn towards the door, then stopped. “One more thing, though. Rush is linked to Destiny in, like, a really fundamental way. There may be consequences to the ship itself if they try to pull him out. Power failures. Shields. Weapons. Life support. Worst case scenario? We don’t blow up when our shields fail at FTL— _maybe—_ but we’re sitting ducks. We’d last, maximum, half a day.”

Young pinched the bridge of his nose. “Eli—“

“And that worst case scenario assumes that Rush _survives_ the attempt to pull him out. So, you know, keep that in mind.”

The door hissed shut behind him as he left.

Young was leaning against the sofa. He dropped his head into his hands. It just _never stopped_ when Rush was involved.

“Why did it have to be him?” he murmured to the unanswering ship. “You could have picked _anyone_. Why _him?_ ”

He had just about managed to recover from that unhappy start to the morning— even making his way down to the mess to convince Becker to hand over some breakfast when it was closer to lunch— when he got his punishment for daring to complain, even to himself, that it never seemed to stop. He’d settled down to actually cut his way through some paperwork that seemed to have started multiplying when he felt the lurch that signaled a drop out of FTL.

He reached out for Rush before he had even noticed what he was doing. Pulling back the block was as easy and natural as turning to look for him. //What’s going on?// he asked.

Rush had paused in the midst of typing. He seemed annoyed with Young for some reason. //And how should I know? I’ve not got a direct line to Destiny’s CPU in my head.//

Young rolled his eyes and pulled out his radio. “Young to bridge. What have we got?”

After a short silence, Volker replied, “Looks like another planet that doesn’t match the age of its parent star. No stargate in sight.”

//Any signs of technology?// Rush prompted.

“Any signs of civilization?” Young asked. “Giant obelisks, that sort of thing?”

“That’s a _check_ in the giant obelisk column.”

“How much time on the clock?”

//Almost eight hours,// Rush said.

“Seven hours, fifty minutes,” Volker replied.

//How did you know that?// Young asked. //I thought you _didn’t_ have a direct line to the Destiny’s CPU.//

Rush sent him an uneasy sense of dismissal. His weather was anxious, turbulent and slightly hyperactive.

“Lieutenant Scott,” Young said into the radio, “assemble a team and be ready to go in ten minutes.”

// _You_ should go,// Rush said. Young could tell that he was twitchy, tapping his fingers against the edge of his laptop.

//I don’t think that’s a good idea.//

//You should go because _I_ should go. But I can’t.//

//Are you going to be okay if I leave the ship?//

//We’re going to have to test it sooner or later. With a shuttle you can turn around if something unexpected happens. With a stargate, you won’t have that chance.//

Young sighed and started heading towards the shuttle bay. //Don’t make me regret this.//

//Just don’t block me out,// Rush said. There was something dense behind the thought that plummeted into unfathomable layers, but Young— racing to get his pack ready— didn’t have time to interpret it.


	7. Chapter 7

 Stepping out of the shuttle, Young was hit by a wall of heat and light that reminded him forcefully (and not reassuringly) of Rush.

//Stop thinking about me,// Rush said. //I can tell that you’re doing it, but I can’t see what you’re thinking. It’s distracting.//

Young rolled his eyes and pushed his sunglasses up his nose.

Although the sun was only about twenty-five degrees above the horizon, it was still oppressive. The landscape was drenched in a light red glare. He’d borrowed a pair of sunglasses, which offered some protection, but he wished that he’d been able to find desert fatigues. His black uniform was heating up.

There was something unearthly about the desolation of the landscape here. To the south and the west the land rushed away in a vast rocky plain as far as the eye could see. The wind was already spitting up particles of fine red dust; if Young held still for a moment, he’d find his hands coated.

//There must be extremely high levels of iron oxide in the landscape,// Rush said. //I wonder if that’s natural, or a byproduct of the technology used to build the obelisk.//

//Does it matter?// Young didn’t like thinking about the spire that rose up like a spike through the planet, blocking out a thin spine of sun.

//I find it— interesting.//

Something about Rush’s reply didn’t feel right. Young frowned, and shifted so that he was a little closer to Rush. Rush was reclining on an infirmary gurney. He had his laptop beside him, but he didn’t seem to be looking at it.

//Aren’t you supposed to be helping Brody monitor the long-range sensors?// Young asked.

//Yes, yes,// Rush said distractedly.

“There’s something not right here,” Greer muttered as they formed up outside the shuttle doors. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Ruins are always like that,” Young said brusquely. “Let’s get going. Evans, you take point. We’re on the clock.”

They turned north, where the sight of the obelisk could not be avoided. Young tried to avoid letting his eyes follow it up out of the sand. He agreed with Greer that something didn’t feel right— though maybe it was just the sinister look of the obelisk and the clouds of loose red sand— but he couldn’t settle his attention on it. In that floorboard place of his mind, something odd was happening that had too many angles, and he didn’t trust Rush, left to his own devices up there.

//Rush,// he said, trying to shift them into an even sharper alignment. //What are you _doing?_ Monitor the long range sensors, and pay attention.//

//I’m so glad that you can now give me orders in my _head_ ,// Rush snapped.

“Nick.” That was a woman’s voice, to Rush’s left, but it wasn’t TJ. Young could see her silhouette, but he didn’t recognize her.

“One moment,” Rush murmured. He tried to narrow his focus on the sensors, just as Young was trying to make him look at the woman instead. They wrestled with each other for a moment, fruitlessly. Then—

A flower of light and sound opened into Rush’s consciousness, unfolding and folding him into its arms. An ocean of surpassing blueness on which a city dangled like a pendant; dove-gray birds exploding out from under an archway made of quartz; the resonant frequencies of a hyperdrive element; a woman’s voice, _Sicut tegei docevam… Itave._ Young couldn’t keep hold of the sounds, the images. A plain of silver grass. The gravity was very low there. This was a long time before— The sun was a much much whiter sun. There was an instrument made out of human bone. Not human bone but— A stringed instrument. Their ideas about death were different, see. It was bowed with wood and _crisnes._ That’s a kind of— And the sound that came out of that bone, it was— When it was sweetly played—

He didn’t— It was—

Shutting.

A stretch over long distances.

Rush was going— _somewhere._ Young wasn’t allowed. Dark.

He _pulled back._ You _can’t have him._

Rush was being unspooled all through that cavern. But Young was pulling _back_ he was _pulling back_ and with a _snap_ like a cut wire Rush was coiling coiling coiling fast until he  _burst_ into the open air.

//What the _hell_ was that?// Young shot at Rush. He bent over, feeling like he’d spent the last ten minutes drowning and just now been able to drag in a breath. //Are you all right?//

//I’m fine.// Rush sounded dazed. He didn’t seem able to focus on anything. His thoughts were a smear of lassitude, bordered with euphoric halation.

//Snap out of it,// Young snarled at him. //The ship is doing something to you!//

“Sir?” He realized that Greer had a hand on his shoulder. “Something wrong? You okay?”

“I’m good,” Young said. He was still breathing hard. “My knee’s just acting up.”

//Rush. _Rush._ What just happened?//

///The ship was— communicating with me.//

“You sure?” Greer still hadn’t let go of his arm.

//?// Young sent.

//You didn’t get any of that?// Rush asked vaguely. His weather felt hazy— slurred, hyperbright, and out of alignment.

//Any of what? Can you quit worrying me? You sound like— not yourself.//

Rush sent him a woozy sense of something that was probably supposed to be reassurance. Young didn’t feel reassured at all.

//Tell the ship to leave you alone,// Young snapped.

//We’re _fine._ //

//Who is _we?_ You and the ship?//

Rush didn’t answer.

Young sighed. He realized that Greer was waiting for a response. He motioned. They might has well head on. “Let’s go.”

The away team had nearly reached the base of the obelisk, which stood not far from a steep drop-off. On the shuttle ride in, they’d noticed a concatenation of buildings scattered below this cliff face, which bore looking into. They had set down about half a klick from the obelisk, and were close enough now to tell that it was made of a metal alloy with a dull red finish, possibly intended to blend into the landscape. The whole body of it was covered in pictograms, maybe even writing, which was definitely something that Rush would want to check out— except that Rush’s mind currently felt like someone had shaken it up with three parts gin and poured it on ice.

//Rush,// Young tried again. //Talk to me.//

//You’re overreacting,// Rush said. //I was monitoring the sensor array and received— a suggestion regarding how to do so without a computer.//

//From who? Were you talking to the AI?//

Why was Rush being so goddamn cagey? Now he was _doing_ something to his own thoughts, something that felt from Young’s perspective like Rush taking a hammer to a sheet of ice, fracturing it into so many pieces that you couldn’t see the original shape, or tell what might have been frozen in it at some point. The ice was Rush’s _thoughts_ , was the thing, so it had to be giving him a hell of a headache, even worse than it was giving to Young, and he was doing it, as far as Young could tell, for the sole purpose of being secretive.

Fortunately, he was pretty slow on the uptake right now, and Young was still able to get a sense of what he was trying to hide. It was— Gloria. Young never known her name before. But he had seen her. The woman he’d glimpsed standing by Rush’s gurney. Rush’s wife. But— not. Memories of Gloria in the corridor, Gloria in the control interface room, Gloria who was not Gloria but the AI but who was also Gloria, Gloria saying, _We haven’t got time for this Nick just_ and Gloria saying _Try it the way I showed you yes don’t think of it as a spatiotemporal direction_ _can you_ and Nick had, Nick could, Nick did.

The AI had been talking to Rush for a long time. But _this_ was something different.

Rush hadn’t gone into the dark because he was talking to the Destiny in the same way he talked to the AI. For a moment, Rush had _become_ the Destiny. He had pooled his consciousness into the ship.

//Do not do that again,// Young sent forcefully.

//Which part?// Rush asked. His projection was still wobbly, but Young could tell he was feeling extremely self-satisfied.

// _Stay out of the ship_.//

//Don’t worry; I have no doubt you’ll chain me up again as soon as you get done there.//

Young pinched the bridge of his nose. //Could you stop being so dramatic?//

//Go fuck yourself,// Rush said.

“Great,” Young muttered under his breath. “That’s just great.” He stared up at the obelisk. It seemed a lot more approachable than Rush, and, at the moment, a lot easier to understand.

He counted to ten and tried again. //Are you going to be all right up there for the next six hours?//

//Obviously.//

//I don’t know if I can pull you out again.//

//I never made any such request,// Rush snapped.

Young felt him return to monitoring the long-range sensors— without a computer. Thankfully, nothing overtly strange seemed to be happening this time. It was more like, he thought (realizing how high his threshold for _strange_ had become) Rush had receded into the distance in a way that was non-Euclidean but minimally alarming. Young felt very both very far away and extremely close to him.

* * *

 “It’s too quiet,” Greer murmured, after they’d reached the base of the obelisk and Young had ordered the members of the away team to fan out.

“No animals,” Young said. “Hardly any plant life.”

“What the hell happened here?”

“Nothing good.”

He kept watching the horizon line as though something were going to come over it. Something about sand, he supposed. It always made you feel like you were inside a Western. He really hoped it was that, and not some kind of quantum fucking sixth sense.

Greer, Thomas, and him made their way towards the edge of the cliff, their footsteps muffled by the red dust. Once they had just about reached that abrupt and uncanny shear line, they could see the ruins that Young had spotted from the shuttle. They looked less like ruins, this close up, and more like some kind of camp: just a couple of buildings, tacked together from some kind of dull gray metal. They were abandoned, and clearly had been for a fair amount of time; familiar, too, in a way that Young couldn’t place. They gave him a kind of pang to look at. God, he hoped they weren’t going to end up being another Destiny crew dislocated in time; that shit was always happening with stargates, and he was absolutely at his day’s maximum for weirdness. The thing that sucked, though, was that they sure looked like they were going to be from _some_ sort of ship, and even an alien ship was too close for comfort. He knew that kind of sad little structure too well. He could imagine what being stuck in that situation would be like.

Greer glanced over at him. “You thinking base camp?” he asked.

“Maybe,” Young said. “It would have to have been a pretty substantial ship. There’s a lot of metal down there. Thomas, you want to send a kino down that rock face?”

He turned his mind in Rush’s direction. //Any thoughts, genius?//

Rush was slow to respond. For all that he’d been pretty goddamn cavalier before, he was having a hard time untangling himself from the ship. //They look familiar,// Rush said slowly. He wasn’t paying a lot of attention.

//Thanks. Great. Very helpful. Thanks for that.//

Thomas’s kino soared over the rock face, inching down along that featureless red wall until its eye reached a massive object made of dark matte metal and buried right in the rock.

“That could be a ship,” Greer said, as Thomas moved the kino to get a better view. “But…” He trailed off as they studied the kino remote.

Young was pretty sure he was thinking the same thing. He shivered in spite of the heat. “…How did a ship that big drive itself so far into a solid rock wall?”

He turned his attention back to Rush. //Hey. Rush,// he sent, with a mental equivalent of snapping his fingers. //You were the one who wanted to come down here so much; I need you to focus for thirty goddamn seconds. What’s your take on this?//

He could feel Rush trying to claw his way free of the Destiny’s winding tendrils. Young, impatient, gave him a hard yank. Rush tumbled into half-consciousness, at least partially able to focus on the kino remote.

//This is disturbing,// he said, inspecting the footage. Young could feel his mind branching over the problem. There was something nonlinear, distributed, but methodical about it, like ants swarming a leaf. //Send the kino down towards the base of the cliff.//

Young took the remote from Thomas and maneuvered the kino down to the abandoned settlement, panning across what he now saw were piles of debris. They had been sorted by material, as though as part of a salvage operation: beamwork, sheets of metal, electronic circuitry, and a semitransparent surface very similar to glass.

He felt Rush’s hands clench in an effort to control the rise of panic.

//What’s wrong?// Young sent.

//Keep panning,// Rush said, his mental voice tight.

Young set the kino in motion once more. Only a few seconds passed before Rush said, //There. Stop.//

They were looking at another pile of debris. This one appeared to be solar cells of some kind. Young wondered how he recognized that, and even as he did so, he felt alarm spiking in Rush. Rush shoved a flood of information right into Young’s head: the metal alloy, the viewscreens, and the design of the circuits had all made Rush suspect they were looking at an Ancient ship, but now he had positively identified part of the ship’s FTL drive. It was certainly Ancient, and had certainly been manned.

//So not a seed ship,// Young said. //Unless someone else took it apart?//

//Whoever dismantled that thing knew what they were about. They understood the technology.//

Something else was bothering Rush. Young’s own anxiety was ratcheting up, but he couldn’t separate it from Rush’s; he didn’t know what there was to be anxious about, he only knew that he _was._ //?// he sent.

//As usual,// Rush sent, //you fail to identify the most critical question. The ship did not _crash_ into that cliff. The material displacement of such a massive ship would’ve shattered the structural integrity of the rock face. Even if you wouldn’t conceptualize this in such a manner, you know it to be the case. It’s what made you uneasy as soon as you saw it.//

Young felt his skin crawl.

//The viewscreens you see at the base of the cliff aren’t so much as _cracked_. There was no apparent attempt to salvage the ship’s shields or power supplies.// His hands were clenching and unclenching against the gurney.

//Can you calm down, please?// Young could barely breathe through the electrical storm of Rush’s nerves.

//“Don’t tell me to fucking calm down.”// _Now_ Rush seemed to be both projecting and speaking out loud. //“That ship is embedded so far into the cliff that we weren’t able to even identify its _design_. There’s only one way I know for it to have gotten there, and that’s a _phase_ -based technology.”//

Young’s headache was renewing itself. //?//

On the Destiny, Rush looked up as TJ poked her head around the door of an otherwise empty infirmary.

She and Rush regarded each other silently for a moment. Rush had stopped typing.

“Hi,” TJ said uncertainly.

“Hello,” Rush said.

“Talking to the colonel?”

“Yes.” He looked away. “Ideally it wouldn’t have been out loud.”

“Well,” she said. “I’m sure it’ll come with practice.”

“Stop being so nice,” Rush said. But the words lacked his usual edge. “It’s intensely irritating.”

TJ rolled her eyes and ducked back behind the doorway.

Young was immensely grateful that she’d stepped in and derailed Rush. It was better to sidetrack him before he hit the point of hysterics.

//Phase-based technology?// he prompted, hoping to get a cooler response.

//p=h-bar*(k) and E=h-bar*(w), correct? So if one shifts the matter wave to be ninety degrees out of phase with its surroundings, then they no longer interact and can occupy the same space at the same time.// With this, Rush sent several graphs of sinusoidal waves shifting in position relative to each other.

// _…H-bar?_ // Young asked him incredulously.

//If I can pick up Tamara’s body language— a _completely useless skill_ , by the way— is it too much to hope you can pick up some physics? H-bar is the mathematical notation for Dirac’s constant.//

//Stop wasting time,// Young snapped at him, and then regretted it when Rush’s weather started to spike.

//Look, something either sent that ship out of phase and pulled it back _into_ phase once it was inside the cliff or, more likely, the cliff, maybe even the whole _planet_ briefly went out of phase relative to the ship. The ship flew through it— or was _pulled in—_ and then was trapped when the planet went back into phase.//

//So we’re potentially on a phase-shifting planet.//

//Yes, and we should get out of here as soon as possible. Preferably before you trigger whatever technology is responsible. Get James and Evans to take the shuttle and pick up those FTL parts and get back to the ship.//

“James,” Young said into his radio. “Evans. Pack it up and head over to our position.”

Greer eyed him watchfully. “What are you thinking, sir?”

Young set down his pack, trying to estimate how much rope they had between them. The upper portion of the exposed Ancient ship was maybe fifty to seventy-five feet below their position, and the best entry point was about twenty-five feet below that.

“I’m thinking,” he said, “that’s a very long way down a very sheer cliff face.”

When James and Evans had returned, Young motioned them near the kino viewer.

“Okay, people,” he said. “We’re on top of wreckage from a crashed Ancient ship.”

//Inaccurate,// Rush complained.

“That’s part of an FTL drive,” Young continued, zooming in on the metal below. “That’s our top priority. We need those parts. James, Evans, Thomas: take the shuttle and salvage as much of the drive equipment as you can. Take anything that looks useful. Greer and I are going to rappel down the cliff to get a look at the interior of the ship.”

Greer waited until the other three had moved out to ask, “Got much climbing experience, sir?”

“Tons,” Young said dryly. “Yourself?”

“Oh, you know,” Greer said uneasily.

“Great.”

//You’re going to have Greer belay you from the top?// Rush said. //Good luck with that.//

//Don’t distract me,// Young said.

//Wear a fucking harness. If we’re giving each other advice.//

//That’s not advice. It’s common sense, which is not a characteristic I normally associate with _you._ //

Rush seemed to get in a snit about that, because he went silent in Young’s head.

It took Young about ten minutes to assemble two rudimentary harnesses out of some line and carabiners. He actually did have the kind of climbing experience you’d expect from a kid who’d grown up in the outdoors— nothing too fancy, but a few family trips out to the Tetons, and a couple leaves down in New Mexico with Air Force friends. That seemed… like a really long time ago. He was suddenly acutely aware of the fact that he’d spent the last three years on a spaceship, not knocking around the Sandias.

He stood with his back to the cliff-edge, facing Greer, who had braced his heels in the soft dirt. When he looked over the cliff, he could see the small shape of the shuttle. It had already landed at the cliff’s base.

It had been a bad idea to look down.

He closed his eyes for a moment. But this was what was happening. He swallowed.

“Ready?” he asked Greer.

“As I’m going to be.”

Young pulled his jacket sleeves over the palms. He gripped the rope. He took a deep breath and stepped over the edge.

It was important, he knew, to keep his attention on the rock right beneath him, and on the pressure of the line— not the dizzying drop.

As he inched down, he realized that his concentration was extraordinarily heightened, and that this was due to the presence of Rush. He had never experienced this level of focus, not even at his peak condition. He wasn’t tired or frightened. He felt almost no pain in his knee. Then—

Something distracted Rush.

The Destiny shuddered.

With a shock of alarm, Rush pulled away from Young’s mind.

Young slipped as a bolt of pain sliced through his temples. He slid three or four feet before Greer caught him on the belay line. He was aware of the ache in his knee, the burn of fatigue in his shoulders.

His radio crackled. “Something’s happening,” James’s voice said. “The base of the obelisk just lit up.”

Young looked up to see a swirl of clouds condensing violently in the upper atmosphere. Lightning flared through their dark forms in erratic bursts and fans.

He stepped down, increasing his pace, but slipped again as his boot encountered a particularly smooth patch of rock. Greer caught him on the belay line once more.

Without sound or warning, the top of the obelisk seemed to _turn on_ , shooting out a towering column of pure white light. It pierced the planet’s atmosphere, absolutely noiseless, like a laser of unfathomably monstrous size.

Young pressed his face to the rock, feeling the sand grit along his cheekbones.

Suddenly Rush slammed back into him. //Cut the belay line and tell Greer to run.//

//What?// Young was already tightening his grip on the anchor line and pulling out his knife

//DO IT.//

The tension in the line made it easy to slice through. Young sheathed the knife and grabbed his radio. Above him, he could see Greer looking down.

“Run!” Young shouted.

“I’m not leaving you here, sir!”

“That’s an order, Sergeant! You move your ass! Get away from that thing!”

Greer was still hesitating.

// _Go_ ,// Rush said.

Young went.

 _They_ went. Rush had grabbed his crutches and was forcing himself through one of the Destiny’s corridors.

Young slid another five feet. Another ten. The friction of the rope was heating the sleeves of his jacket. He cursed.

The ground beneath him trembled, and, with a sickening sensation, he felt the tension on the line go slack.

He was falling.

The rope, still attached to his harness, trailed above him like a long and curling ribbon.

He watched it from a very long way below and from a very long way above and the sky was manic with lightning and the hallway was dark and Gloria was screaming and he was falling and he was falling and then—

They were together. So close that they didn’t have to talk. They twisted in the air and slammed their hands into the cliff. Their fingers tore open against the rock, catching on small plants in the crevices that marred the shear line. One hand finally gripped a tiny ledge. Then another. Their feet scrabbled for purchase.

One foothold.

Then another.

Breathing.

They knew that somewhere above them the ground had shifted out of phase. They knew the phase shift had severed the line. They knew the affected field would advance until it covered the planet. The only question they had left was how quick.

The radio crackled, loud in the quiet air. “Hold on, sir!” It was James. “We’re coming for you.”

But from their current position it would be physically impossible to enter the shuttle. They would have to climb down the last fifteen feet and stand on the edge of the trapped ship.

They looked to their left and, seeing a promising-looking handhold, shifted most of their weight to the right and lunged for it which was all right they’ll admit it a substantially riskier move than they might have liked but it can’t be helped so just _bite down_ on the terror. Right hand joined left and feet found purchase again. Then right hand, left leg. And again. Iterations were calming. Above them a line of distortion was slowly moving down the cliff. It was imperative that they stay ahead of it because if they did not but this conditional was not helpful so they set it aside. Six feet above the ship’s hull the face of the rock turned perfectly smooth, as though it had liquefied in the single moment of the shift. They did not like this, _fuck_ , but it was okay, this was what they were built for, this was what they were trained for, so given no alternative they dropped straight down.

The shock of hitting the metal plating made their knee buckle under, and pain knifed up from the injury through their spine. They had to just get their goddamn hands underneath them first, then feet, just— one very very hard survivable step at a time. And blood was oozing out from under all their fingernails but that was survivable too and that was all right because when they looked up the shuttle was hovering almost on top of them and James was shouting, “Sir! Sir, _now!”_

They glanced over their shoulder and saw the edge of the visual distortion caused by the phase shift crawling down inexorably towards where they stood. They pulled together all the energy that remained in the fucking crevices of their body because they would not be defeated they would not bow to this and they took two long strides before launching out into free space.

They crashed into James, landing in a tangle of limbs. Thomas dragged them back from the rear of the shuttle as Evans accelerated away from the cliff face.

Young steadied himself as he was hit by an intense wave of vertigo.

On the Destiny, Rush blinked and slowly pushed himself up. It was very dark. He was lying alone in a corridor somewhere near the ship’s FTL drive. He’d been about to—

Young squeezed his eyes shut and reorientated.

“Greer?” he shouted to the rest of the away team.

“I’ve got a visual on him now, sir,” Evans yelled back. “It’s going to be close.”

Young stepped up behind her shoulder to see Greer running flat out, above fifty feet ahead of the advancing wave.

“Ready?” Evans yelled back to James.

James had unclipped the rope that was still trailing from Young’s harness, and just finished a knot that put a loop in the end of the rope. She started lowering it out the open back of the shuttle. Evans slowed the shuttle to match Greer’s speed, staying just ahead of him. Young grabbed the slack of the rope that was piled behind James, motioning for Thomas to do the same.

“Now!” James shouted to them as the rope went tight. Young and Thomas started hauling Greer up as Evans slowly gained altitude. James dropped to her knees all of a sudden, one arm anchored around a cargo strap, the other reaching out.

Greer’s hand came into view, closing solidly around James’s arm, their grips hand-to-elbow. In the next moment, he climbed solidly over the edge. Young hit the controls for the shuttle bay doors, and they closed, blocking out the sight of the phase wave as it ate its way across the face of the ground below.

Greer looked up at Young from the shuttle floor, breathing hard. “How in the _hell_ did you know that was coming, sir?”

“Tell you later,” Young said quietly, and saw Greer shoot him a look of sudden comprehension. “Strap in.”

He took the copilot’s seatnext to Evans as the sky gave way to stars.

“Destiny,” he hailed the ship, “we’re on our way back. What’s your status?”

“We’re— not doing great,” Scott responded. “The ship’s caught in some kind of electromagnetic field. It’s pulling us toward the planet. The engines are running at full power, but we’re losing ground. Eli says that we’re in a decaying orbit.”

//Hey,// Young said to Rush. //What’s going on?//

//The beam of light generated by the obelisk is a visual side effect of the creation of a massive electrical field gradient, which is, unfortunately, attracting the ship.// Rush rounded a corner and entered a room full of monitors that Young was _sure_ he’d never seen before. //I am attempting to do something about that.//

Young got a vague outline of Rush’s plan, which seemed to involve the FTL drive. //Tell Eli what you’re doing,// he said.

//Certainly.// Something in Rush’s tone made Young nervous. “Rush to Eli,” Rush said into his radio, voice excruciatingly polite.

“ _Rush._ We’ve been trying to reach you for the last _five minutes._ Where _are_ you?” Eli demanded.

“I’m about to enter the FTL drive.”

“What do you mean _enter_ it?”

“Don’t override _anything_. Rush out.”

Young pressed his hand over his eyes.

Rush knelt with significant difficulty and placed his hand over a panel beneath one of the monitors. Young could tell that he wanted to pry it open, but he didn’t have any tools with him. Instead, he made a mental _request_ of the panel, and a hidden catch released. The metal fell forward into his hands. Rush lowered it to the floor and crawled through the opening he’d created, into a narrow space filled with blue-white light. He started to drag himself forward through what was, apparently, an access tunnel. The space was too confined for him to even crawl.

//You’re going to need to boost your power to make it back to Destiny in time,// he instructed Young.

“Is there any way we can boost our speed?” Young asked Evans.

“I’ve already rerouted power from secondary systems,” Evans said. “But I could start pulling from weapons, shields, and life support.”

//Life support?// Young shot at Rush.

//Do it.//

“Give us everything you can,” Young said. After a few seconds, he could feel the change in their velocity pushing him back against his seat.

//Ask Eli or Chloe if you can make it back before the orbit decays past the point of no return,// Rush said. His voice had gotten very abstracted. //I’ve got too much going on to figure it out for you.//

“Scott, put Eli on,” Young said over the radio.

“Hey,” Eli said breathlessly. “Do you know what Rush is doing? Because—“

“Eli,” Young cut him off. “I need you or Chloe to tell me if at our current shuttle speed we’re going to make it back to the Destiny before her orbit decays to the point that we can’t escape the planet’s gravity.”

“Uh… okay?” Eli said.

“What the hell is happening?” James whispered to Greer.

“You’ll make it back,” Chloe said over the radio. “Ninety seconds to spare.”

//Perfect,// Rush said.

//I don’t think you know what _perfect_ means.//

Young could feel Rush dragging himself further into the heart of the FTL drive. He would never have described himself as a claustrophobic man, but he was feeling almost sick with anxiety. The crawlspace had progressively narrowed, and when Rush finally got into position, he had a hard time even turning over onto his back.

//Rush. What are you _doing?_ //

//I’m using the FTL drive to create an opposing gradient to offset the pull of the obelisk.//

//Is that going to work?//

//Did I distract you when you were climbing down a fucking cliff?// Rush snapped. //No. I did not. So just—// He broke off as he removed the panel directly above his face. //Leave me alone, and come get me when this is done.//

//Come _get_ you?//

There was no response.

Rush was gone from his mind. He was with the ship.

“God,” Young murmured under his breath. “How long until we dock?” he asked Evans.

“Three minutes, twenty-five seconds.”

They were forty-five seconds from docking when Eli’s voice came over the radio. “FTL drive is powering up,” he said. “And we can’t raise Rush. This is _not good_. If we jump to FTL while we’re in this tractor beam, it’s going to tear the ship apart.”

“Don’t override,” Young said tightly.

“Yeah, that’s the word on the street.” Eli sounded less than thrilled.

As they approached the Destiny, they could see the blue light of the drive come on beneath the hull at the back of the ship. The light increased in intensity until it was painful to look at and filled the viewscreen with a blue-white glow.

“We’re coming in hot!” Evans yelled as she spun the shuttle around, firing thrusters to match the Destiny’s increasing speed. The crash when they hit was deafening, and Young was pitched forward, restraints cutting into his shoulders.

“Docking clamps engaged!” he shouted over the stressed-metal screech. Then they were all up, throwing off their restraints and heading for the bridge.

Young grabbed his radio. “Eli, talk to me.”

“The drive’s up, but we’re not jumping,” Eli said shortly. “I can’t tell you more than that.”

A few seconds later, Young slammed his fist against the controls for the bridge.

“Oh, hey,” Eli said, turning towards him. “Good timing. In fifteen seconds we find out whether we’re all going to die.” He was huddled with Chloe and Scott around the main console.

“That’s when we hit the point of no return?” Young asked, joining them, slightly out of breath.

“Yeah, pretty much. I don’t know what Rush is doing with the drive, but he’s channeling more power through it than it actually uses when we’re at FTL.”

“Is it working?”

“No, unless he hasn’t done it yet. Whatever _it_ is.”

“Eight seconds,” Chloe said.

“Oh, God, please, no countdowns.”

“Five.”

Young tried to find Rush again, but got only an odd, still, dazed, quiet sense of purpose and a brief flash of exposed circuitry.

The clock hit zero.

The viewscreens exploded with light.

Everyone flinched back, dark silhouettes against the glare. The ship gave a sudden lurch, unbalancing them. Young had to catch Chloe’s arm as she fell.

“It’s working!” Eli shouted. “We’re pulling away!”

Young could feel the strain of the sublight engines pulsing as the Destiny struggled. Squinting into the spill of white light, he could have sworn that for an instant he saw Sheppard standing beside the command chair, his face taut, as though he was fighting under impossible strain.

Gradually, their progress became quicker and smoother. Eventually the light began to fade, leaving them to rub viewscreen-shaped shadows out of their vision.

The air was staticky with a sense of relief. Young felt the strange looseness that followed terror.

“New rule,” Eli said. “No planets without gates.”

* * *

It took Young only about ten minutes after leaving the bridge to retrace Rush’s earlier steps and make his way to the FTL drive. He was kneeling in front of the access panel in the empty room, trying to psych himself up to crawl into the confined space, when he heard his name.

“Everett.” It was Sheppard, slouching against the door frame.

Young flinched at his appearance and took a deep breath.

“What are you waiting for?” the AI asked.

“Is there an— _easier_ way to get him out?”

“Yes. But you must use this route if you plan on reversing the drive polarity as you extract him.”

“I think I’ll leave that to someone else,” Young said carefully. “I just want to get him _out_.”

“Then follow me,” Sheppard said, turning.

Young followed it out into the dim corridor. About fifty feet down it stopped and pointed at a section of wall. “Here.”

“What am I supposed to be looking for?” he asked it.

“A hidden access panel,” it said, with an undertone of: _obviously?_ Young wanted to think that it wasn’t at all like Sheppard in that moment. But hearing that tone of voice made him remember a half-dozen times when he hadn’t _quite_ been sure if Sheppard was joking, when maybe he’d wanted to think that Sheppard was generally kind, or maybe _not_ wanted to think that he was so much slower than Sheppard, not because _he_ would care (he didn’t really give a damn), but because Sheppard would. It had just been a fraught fucking friendship, the way that maybe all Sheppard’s friendships were fraught. And Young had never really thought about it like that. And now he couldn’t _not_ think about it, and he felt twenty thousand more light years from Earth— from Earth and everything he’d thought he understood about the way that things happened there.

“Do you have to do that?” he said. “Do you have to look like someone I know? Why not just be— Gloria, or whoever Rush wants you look like?”

Its expression became neutral, maybe slightly uncertain or wary. “You choose this form for me. It is not my choice.”

And with that, it was gone.

Young had to scrabble at the metal for several minutes to find the very-well-hidden switch that would pop the access panel open. When it came loose, he recognized the blue-white space that Rush had crawled through. He leaned inside, and could see the bottoms of Rush’s boots.

He sighed. //Rush?//

Still almost nothing.

He ducked halfway inside the crawlspace and reached forward to grab Rush’s ankles. As soon as his hands closed around Rush’s legs, he could feel _something_ — not quite a consciousness, more like a piece of thinly woven fabric, stretched out wide, very vague and dispersed.

Rush wasn’t injured. He wasn’t in pain. He just... wasn't there. He'd gotten lost out in that darkness, in the belly of the ship.

"God," Young said without much energy. "You  _idiot._ "

He dragged Rush through the crawlspace. By the time he’d gotten halfway out, Rush was trying to help him somewhat, though his movements were slow and uncoordinated, more like flailing than any actual help. The two of them ended up sprawled on the deck of the corridor, Young exhausted and panting, and not really caring that Rush was resting half on his chest.

After a minute, he tried to shift Rush off him, figuring that as soon as Rush realized what was happening, he was liable to put a fist in Young's face. But no sooner had he done so than Rush’s mind seemed to drift back into the ship like a cloud of lightning bugs that Young hadn’t quite managed to close in a jar. Young got his hands around Rush's shoulders again and mentally— _pulled—_ dragging Rush out of the ship’s clamoring darkness the same way he’d dragged him from the crawlspace. It was like— pulling a broken teacup back together, resisting and reversing the forces that had pushed it apart, but easier somehow, like the teacup was  _meant_ to reassemble.

Rush blinked. His gaze went sharp, every part of him suddenly turning tense under Young's touch.

“Hey,” Young said quietly. “It's just me. It’s all right.”

Rush's expression was hard to read. His mind was nervous and shivery and careful.

As they looked at each other, Young was reminded of evenings back home in Wyoming, when he would go out at twilight and find some wild animal close to the house, frozen by the sound of his approaching footsteps— usually something small, a squirrel or a rabbit, breathing hard and scared. Sometimes a spindly, dark-eyed deer, its smooth flanks shaking. They could always see him, those animals; and they were fast, much faster than he was, so he shouldn't have frightened them. But they had an instinct he didn't understand.

"I know it's you," Rush said at last. "Of course it's you." He shoved Young off him.

Young sighed. He stood and offered Rush a hand. "It was good work," he said, a little unwillingly.

Rush let Young pull him to his feet. "Yes," he said. "Well. Thank you for— whatever it is you do, exactly."

"Apparently, I put you back together," Young said. 

"I'm sure that's a grossly inaccurate characterization," Rush said. He wasn't meeting Young's gaze. "But. Even so."

At the same moment, both of them realized that they were still touching, and dropped each other's hands as though they'd been burned.

There was a short silence. 

"You're a pain in the ass," Young said. "But you do have your moments."

Rush shrugged minutely. He said, his face guarded, "So do you, I suppose."


	8. Chapter 8

“What,” Rush said, his voice cracking across the room like a whip, “is _this?"_

Young watched him straighten from where he’d been sorting through the debris that the away team had salvaged from the Ancient base camp. He was holding something small and semi-spherical in his hand. It wasn’t large, but it was heavy, and it made Rush’s wrist ache. Rush didn’t seem to feel the pain, but it was definitely bothering Young. He was tired. They’d both had to scrape their way down seventy-five feet of cliffside, culminating in two hard landings, but Rush had gotten to use Young’s body for it. It didn’t seem fair for Rush to then insist on twitching around the gate room for the best part of an hour, picking up every hunk of junk and abusing the hell out of his feet.

He hoped Rush had heard that. But Rush showed no sign of it. He was busy inspecting the semi-spherical Ancient _thing_. “Who brought this on board?” he asked. He turned to narrow his gaze at Evans, James, Greer, and Thomas. “Which one of you?”

The away team froze. They’d all been on the wrong side of one of Rush’s tantrums.

//Can you stop terrorizing people?// Young suggested wearily.

//I don’t know what you mean.//

//The first thing I’m going to do when we get back to Earth is request a copy of your last psych evaluation.//

//That sounds fair, considering that I’ve already read yours.//

//Wait, _what?_ //

//Take it up with Colonel Telford.//

“Which one?” Rush asked again. He was still holding the away team prisoner with his stare.

James raised her hand slowly. She looked like she was afraid that Rush might cut it off. “I did?”

“Why?” Rush fired at her. “What made you do so?”

“It… looked like a kino?” James offered faintly.

“It looked like a kino,” Rush repeated slowly. He prowled closer to her, the object balanced in his palm. “Well, Lieutenant. Tell someone you should be promoted.”

“… Um,” James said.

“Eli,” Rush snapped.

Apparently it was a summons. He shoved the kino-thing at Eli as Eli reached him, and set off on his crutches. Eli followed him, looking harried and like he was tired of being Rush’s valet.

//Wow. You are on _fire_ ,// Young said. //Do you rehearse this kind of thing in your quarters? Or does it just come to you naturally?//

Rush ignored him.

“Wait a second,” Greer said to James. “Did Rush just say something _nice_ to you? Is that what just happened?”

“I don’t…” James’s voice trailed off. She sounded lost. “Maybe?”

Young peeled himself off of the wall where he’d been leaning and followed Rush and Eli. //Could you slow down?// he said irritably as he caught up to them. They were headed to the control interface room. //For, like, five seconds?//

//If you’re tired, consider taking a nap.// The condescension of Rush’s thoughts was incredible, considering that less than an hour earlier Young had pulled him out of a goddamn wall.

//What do you want, a medal?// Rush shot at him.

//How about you tell me why Telford gave you my psych eval?//

Rush paused. //It’s a long story.//

//Well, I’m a patient man.//

//I’ve never gotten that impression.//

“Um, so, you guys?” Eli said. “It’s actually super obvious that you’re arguing with each other in your heads.”

There was a pause. Rush and Young avoided looking at one another.

“Is it?” Rush said, as though he couldn’t care less.

“Yes. Especially you. You need to work on your poker face. And _you,_ ” Eli said, rounding on Young, “need to stop staring at him like you want to strangle him.”

Young shrugged. “Frankly, I do.”

He kind of did. That desire only mounted when they made it to the CI room, where the monitor screens flared to life as soon as they entered. (“Show off,” Eli said to Rush. Rush countered, “Efficiency.”) Young had thought maybe Rush would settle down when he had something to work on, but he was in constant motion: bouncing on the balls of his feet, pacing in short circles, drumming his fingers against a console, hugging his arms against his chest. Young perched in a chair while Eli worked to interface the kino-ish thing from the planet with the Destiny’s equipment, trying to ignore the restless, uncontrollable back-and-forth of a body that _wasn’t his_.

Around the time that Eli plugged the kino in, Young had started to fantasize about making Rush’s more hyperbolic metaphors come true and _actually_ chaining the man up. At least that way he couldn’t do whatever the hell he was doing to his broken metatarsals— a couple of times, Young could’ve sworn that he felt the cracked bone shift. Rush was supposed to be staying _off_ his feet, and Young was supposed to be enjoying the brief window of time when he wasn’t being required to climb up things, climb down things, jump off things, pull other people up things, or get shot in the knee.

Rush sensed his irritation, but seemed unable to identify its source. He shot Young a baffled look from where he was leaning over Eli’s monitor. “What the fuck’s wrong with you, then?”

“What’s _wrong_ with me?”

Rush made an impatient, dismissive gesture. “In the immediate, not the general, sense. I’m well aware that the latter explanation would take hours.”

Young shut his eyes and tried to control his temper. “Do you remember what happened down on that planet at _all?_ ”

“I remember you interfering in things that were none of your business, and failing to perceive some fairly obvious warning signs.” Rush’s attention wandered back to the monitor. “Or were you referring to your startling feats of athleticism? I’m sure we’re all very impressed.”

He leaned further forwards, inspecting something on the monitor screen, placing all of his weight on one of his damaged wrists. The pain was a dragging, brutal grind against Young’s frayed nerves.

Before he could stop himself, Young reached forward and grabbed hold of Rush’s shoulders, yanking him abruptly backwards and shoving him into a chair. “I am really goddamn tired,” he snapped, “and thanks to you, I’ve got eleven fresh fucking stitches in my knee, which I just had to use to do some last-minute, running-for-your-life extreme sports because _someone_ wanted to go visit a phase-shifting planet, so if you could just _sit down_ for ten goddamn minutes and _stay there_ , I would _appreciate_ it.”

Rush jerked violently, slapping Young’s hands off of him. “Don’t _touch_ me.”

Eli cleared his throat. “So, uh,” he said. “This mindmelding stuff is going really well for you guys, I see.”

//If you can’t fucking handle it, _block_ ,// Rush shot at Young.

//Right. Great. You know I can still feel the ship trying to pull you back in? If I block you, you’ll be SOL. Catatonic, just like you were in the FTL drive.//

//You’ve not got the first fucking idea what you’re talking about. I’ll be _fine_.// Rush’s weather was hot, disdainful, and agitated.

//You are so—//

“Hey,” Eli interrupted. He was staring at the monitor. “So I’m not sure this is a kino. Now that it’s powered up, it seems to want to project something?”

Rush’s eyes went unfocused for a moment. He frowned. “That’s correct,” he said, sounding surprised.

Eli looked uncertainly at the not-kino. “A hologram, maybe? God, I hope it’s not one of those weird adaptive things. The ship seems to think we have the capacity to play it. Do you think I should,uh…?“

Rush nodded curtly.

Eli did something complicated with the monitor screen. There was a low hum, almost like an antique film projector, and the not-kino flickered to life.

A man appeared near the center of the room, astonishingly lifelike, so much so that Young had a hard time believing he wasn’t there. He was wearing the pale, blocky robes that Young recognized as Ancient. He was thin, olive-skinned, weary-looking, and middle-aged, with receding dark hair. There was something really human about him, even though he wasn’t human, or even anything more than a computer recording. Maybe it was just because he seemed so tired.

Rush approached him with an air of fascination. He walked in a slow circle around the hologram. His earlier anger had been wholly forgotten, and in its place wassomething more complicated. He reached out and brushed a hand through the projection, as though hoping he could touch it. The image fritzed slightly, and the man blinked.

“ _Hom inire welhes?”_ he asked.

“ _Itave_ ,” Rush said quickly.

“Hold on, hold on,” Young said. “What did it ask you? What did you just say?”

“He asked if we wanted to begin the recording,” Rush said. He wasn’t looking at Young. His gaze was still fixed on the hologram’s face.

Something flickered in the back of the room, and Young glanced over to see that Sheppard was there. He had a similar look to Rush— sadder and more longing somehow, as though he almost couldn’t stand to be present, but also couldn’t stand to be anywhere else. 

The hologram fritzed again, and then sighed and shifted. “ _Hic pro ollois est, quoi post nou vueniand,”_ it said. The man’s voice was low and ragged. “ _Nou olloi essomos, quoi per viam portasom af Viad Lactead discesdevand, sicut alteroi en tempom soi quoique fafaciand—“_

“Can one of you translate this?” Young asked.

“Um,” Eli said, “We those ones are, those who by the way of gates from Avalon left, as others in the time of themselves also had done.”

“Oh, stop it,” Rush said irritably. “That’s unacceptable. _We are the ones who left Avalon via the gate system, as the others who came before us had also done._ ” He continued the translation fluently, speaking almost in tandem with the hologram. “As we have lost all contact with them, we must assume that they too were unsuccessful. Our hope is that you who find this shall not also fall prey to our mistakes.”

The hologram paused and looked down. For a moment there was a desolation clearly visible in him.. “Rather than attempting to gate directly to Destiny, we planned to overshoot the position of the ship, and instead gated to a seed vessel. We hoped to avoid the power and resources required for such an ambitious undertaking, because at the current time we are besieged on all sides. It took us eight months to gain access to a seed vessel, and the journey was—“ He paused again, his mouth tightening. “Very difficult. We encountered a hostile alien race who currently pursue us. Their understanding of genetics exceeds even our own. They were able to capture and to— to _modify_ one of our party, and in doing so gained much information about us.”

Young and Eli exchanged a glance. Rush seemed unable to tear his eyes from the hologram.

“When the seed ship dropped out of FTL to investigate a planet, we noted that the age of the planet and its parent star did not match, but this did not concern us. We were eager to place a gate in the hopes of boarding Destiny. Even now, we do not know what triggered the shift of the planet out of phase, but we believe that these planets might be designed to prevent ships from reaching the energy breakwater at the edge of the universe. In that,” the man said, his voice becoming unsteady, “they have been successful. We are trapped here. We cannot break free of the planet, and no gate has been set. Furthermore, three of our party, including myself, have begun to show signs. It will not be long now before we all succumb. I have encouraged the crew to build shelters and salvage what remains, but this is primarily for the sake of morale.”

Young remembered the battered little base camp crouched in the shadow of the cliff. He felt a surge of empathy for this Ancient captain, shipwrecked on a lonesome desert world. It was easy— well, relatively easy— to keep people alive, but harder to figure out how to make them keep wanting to live.

He felt Rush look at him then. Rush paused, but picked up the translation.

“I can only advise my crew to do what our people have done: meditate, and attempt ascension.” The Ancient man dropped his gaze. “For myself,” he said softly, “I have little hope. I believe that we will vanish from this universe, leaving no trace of ourselves beyond what we have built.”

Once more the hologram fritzed. “ _Conclausos est_ ,” the man said. His face had become neutral and stripped of emotion.

He’s dead, Young thought. It was obvious, of course; the recording must have been made about a million years ago. But somehow just thinking about that didn’t have the same impact as seeing the man standing there, looking so close to him and yet impossible to save.

Rush said quietly, “That’s the end.”

There was a brief silence.

“Okay, well,” Eli said. “That was depressing.”

Young rubbed his jaw and tried to focus on the logistics of the situation. “What did he mean by ‘show signs’?”

He could feel Rush enveloping the problem in the fast, nonlinear, web-like grip of his mind.

“The plague,” Rush said. “The one that wiped out the Ancients. That’s what they were fleeing.”

“Plague?” Eli said apprehensively.

Young closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“Like a _plague_ plague?” Now Eli’s voice was practically squeaking.

“Do you mean to tell me,” Young said, “that we just went down to a planet where a bunch of Ancients died of a presumably contagious disease that wiped out their civilization, and not only did we _go_ down there, but we brought some of their stuff _back?_ ”

Rush waved an unconcerned hand at him. “It’s extremely unlikely that any pathogen could survive on that planet for such a length of time.” He’d gone back to wandering around the hologram, staring thoughtfully at it.

“Eli, turn that thing off,” Young snapped.

Eli hit a button and the hologram of the Ancient captain disappeared.

Rush turned to him with a furious look.

Young held up a hand and glared at him, pulling his radio out. “TJ?” he said. “We’ve got a potential quarantine situation developing. Have you interacted with anyone or any _thing_ from the planet we just went to?”

She sounded confused. “James and Thomas just dropped off a viewscreen in the infirmary.”

“We need to round up everyone who’s been exposed. If anyone _hasn’t_ been exposed. God.” He scrubbed at his face. There might be no one left to protect with a quarantine.

“I’ll see what I can do,” TJ said quietly.

“You’re behaving absurdly,” Rush said.

“ _You_ are heading to the infirmary.” Young fixed him with a long look, then shifted his stare to Eli. “Both of you. I’ll round up the rest of the away team.”

“No,” Rush said.

“Excuse me?” Young eyed him in open and sincere disbelief.

“No, I decline to participate in your frankly paranoid quarantine. The FTL drive is down, and we’re only a few hundred thousand kilometers from the planet. Until I finish fixing the drive, we’re easy targets.”

“You’re going,” Young said dismissively. He turned to Eli. “Eli, see if TJ can—“

“The relative risk,” Rush interrupted, his voice rising, “of us being discovered while we take _hours_ , if not _days_ , to run decontamination protocols is much greater than some Ancient contagion lasting for millennia on exposed equipment.”

“It… wasn’t all exposed,” Eli pointed out, his voice low. “Some of it was in the shelters. Also—“ He squinted at the not-kino. “Does this look like dried blood to you?”

“Infirmary,” Young said with a note of finality. “Both of you. Now.”

Rush said calmly, “I’m not going.”

Young bit back a vicious response. “Yes. You are.”

“What, are going to _make_ me?” Derision colored the words.

“You sound like a toddler,” Young snapped at him.

“ _You_ sound like an insecure authoritarian with poor reasoning skills.”

Young covered his eyes with one hand. “Eli,” he said, “Go.”

“Um… yeah,” Eli said slowly, lingering by the monitor bank. “But I’m wondering if maybe I should—“

“Go,” Rush said.

Eli went.

Young and Rush regarded each other. Hostility made the room feel narrow and airless.

“I _will_ make you if I have to,” Young said quietly. “And you know I can.”

“You have greatly inflated your importance in the scheme of things,” Rush said, scathing. “You don’t own me, and you don’t control me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to fix the FTL drive.”

He turned to leave.

Young yanked the block up between them.

Rush collapsed onto the deck.

Young watched him for a second, breathing hard, feeling— conflicted. He couldn’t help thinking that something about what he had done was terribly unfair, maybe because Rush had no defense against it. 

He walked over and knelt beside Rush, his knee vehemently protesting. Rush had fallen forward as though his strings had been cut; when Young turned him on his back, he saw that Rush was semi-conscious, eyes desperately flicking between Young and a patch of empty air on his left. He kept losing focus, maybe getting lost in the ship the way he had in the FTL drive. His fingertips scraped now and then against the deck, but he didn’t seem to be able to get any real purchase.

“You are a fucking piece of work,” Young said. “Could you just— make this easy? For both of us?”

Rush’s mouth tightened at that.

“Seriously? No? You’re going to make me keep you like this?”

Rush flinched hard, one fist curling and uncurling.

Young couldn’t look at him.

He pulled out his radio. “TJ? What’s the status on the quarantine?”

“Still working on the list of contacts,” TJ replied. “It’s going to be pretty long.”

“Understood. I should be there in a few minutes. Young out.” He reclipped the radio and glanced at Rush. “This is the right thing to do,” he said. “I’m sorry if you can’t see that. But you’ve got to understand that this is my job. I’m in command.”

Rush wasn’t looking at him. He’d managed to fix his gaze somewhere to the left of Young. There was something unnerving about the intensity of his attention; Young turned and looked to make sure nothing was there. He’d forgotten about the AI, he realized, which had been watching the hologram from the corner— but it had disappeared, or, at least, he didn’t see any trace of it.

Rush suddenly kicked hard at the chair that Young had earlier pushed him into. Well, “hard”— he couldn’t manage up much of a kick, but it clearly took most of his energy. The chair toppled over with a loud crash. Rush kicked out again at the console, his heel connecting with the edge.

Young shook his head. “Really? This is what it’s come to? You can’t do anything, so you’re just going to, what, fuck up whatever you can?”

Rush kicked the console again with the same foot, much harder. His eyes squeezed shut at the impact. It must have hurt hell of a lot. But he seemed… more coordinated, somehow, after.

“— _Oh_ , no,” Young said, as it occurred to him that Rush was intentionally causing himself pain, using it to reorientate himself in his body. He got a good hold on Rush’s jacket and dragged him away, to where there was nothing for him to lash out at.

Who the hell did that, anyway? Rush was basically holding _himself_ hostage, betting that Young wouldn’t be willing to watch this torture. Unless he just didn’t give a fuck, which was equally fucked-up— if not _more_ fucked-up, and therefore, actually, more Rush-like.

With a monumental effort, Rush brought his foot up and kicked it down against the floor. “… Fuck you,” he mumbled, almost unintelligible. “ _Fuck you._ ”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Young said.

Rush did the same thing again.

Young could practically _feel_ the grate of bone on bone, the blood seeping through the bandage.

On the third try, Rush actually made a noise, an involuntary, choked-out cry of pain.

“Stop,” Young said. “Rush, stop it.”

Rush kicked out _again._

Young felt like he was the one in agony. “ _Stop_ ,” he said.

He tried grabbing Rush’s ankles and holding them down, but the physical touch seemed to ground Rush more. What was worse: if he helped Rush screw him over, or if he let Rush fuck himself up? But Rush was _choosing_ to do this; he’d even chosen to let Young block him. If Young gave in and rescued him from a situation of his own goddamn making, he was just playing his part in Rush’s master plan. He had to draw a line at some point.

So, hating himself, he pulled his hands away.

He watched Rush falter for a second before Rush kicked out even harder. Now he was able to turn his head and get his eyes on Young, and his gaze was wild, furious, unbelievably wounded. He didn’t even bother saying anything. He just inched himself across the deck, mouth twisted, breath a stutter, till he could turn over into a cramped, locked kind of kneeling position that looked incredibly painful to maintain— then _pushed_ down on the soles of both his feet until he could grab for one of his discarded crutches and get it under him. He paused and drew a hard breath before using it to lever himself up.

He looked sick as hell, sweating, shaky, and maybe about to hurl, but he’d succeeded.

He stared at Young with an expression of raw defiance. “No one,” he said, his voice unsteady, “keeps me any _where_ , or in any _way_ , _shape,_ or _form.”_

Young felt furious at a level that he couldn't make sense of, and he didn’t know if he more furious at himself or Rush. He hadn't wanted to  _hurt_ Rush; that wasn't who he was. At the same time, he couldn’t stand to see Rush win. How was it so goddamn hard not to be a person who hurt other people, the villain in the story that Rush was writing for himself?

“You think you’re proving something here?” he snapped at Rush. “You think this is going to, what, make me want to help you? It’s not. You can pull yourself out of the goddamn wall this time."

He got to his feet and continued, surprised at how vicious his tone was: "I hope you have a great time fixing the FTL drive. You and the goddamn ship. I guess you finally found someone who won’t get sick of being played like a bad hand of cards, huh? God, no wonder you and Telford used to be so buddy-buddy; you’re two of a kind.”

“ _Fuck you_ ,” Rush hissed.

“Yeah, yeah; fuck me. Get a new line. You want to know something, Rush? You clearly think you’re _tough_ and _edgy_. But it’s incredibly transparent— _incredibly_ transparent— to everyone around you that all you actually are is _really fucked-up._ So I feel sorry for you. I really do.”

Rush didn’t bother responding. He turned his back on Young, slammed his hand against the door controls, grabbed his other crutch, and limped out of the room— leaving Young with the strange, shaky and somehow unsatisfying post-adrenaline feel that always followed a really blow-out argument. He’d had enough of those arguments with his ex-wife to know.

He sighed and then, in a futile burst of rage, dealt a brutal kick to the monitor bank himself. What Rush had gotten out of it remained mysterious, however. It only left him less satisfied.

* * *

“Where’s Rush?” TJ asked when Young made it to the crowded infirmary.

“He’s— ah, repairing the FTL drive,” Young said, looking away.

“Oh, really?” Eli said archly from where he was perched on a nearby gurney. “That’s interesting.”

Young shot him a sharp glance.

TJ, who was looking especially harried in the midst of the quarantined personnel, didn’t seem to notice. “Okay, well, he’s going to need to get here,” she said. “We definitely have a new pathogen on board. At first glance, it does match the parameters of the Ancient plague. And I can’t run the decontamination program until Rush is quarantined.”

“What kind of decon protocol are we talking about?”

“It’s a prolonged pulse of UV radiation that should sterilize everything except the crew quarters and the infirmary. Once we start clearing people who aren’t infected, we can decontaminate everything else. Unfortunately, it means we'll lose the hydroponics lab."

Young leaned back against the gurney wearily. “It kind of feels like no matter what we do around here, it’s always one step forward, one step back.”

TJ shrugged at him and moved away.

"Well," Eli said, "at least you being right about this is going to piss Rush off."

“Trust me, one thing I do not need right now is more ways to piss Rush off.”

“Speaking of—“ Eli began, then fidgeted. He was looking pretty fidgety all around. Young had put it down to his discomfort over the confrontation with Rush. “Well, not really speaking of, but sort of in the broad group of Rush-related problems—“

Young tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling. “Sure. Okay. Hit me.”

“I talked to McKay, and I have bad news and _really_ bad news.”

“Is there any other type of news these days?”

“Does that mean you’ve, like, prepared yourself to hear this? Emotionally?”

“Eli.”

“Just checking! I don’t want you to hit a wall or anything.”

Young decided not to mention that he’d already kicked a monitor bank in the CI room.

“So,” Eli said, “the bad news is that Homeworld Command has already figured out how the communication stones work, and they’ve created a workaround that’ll allow them to recapture any interaction that’s already happened. If you’ve switched with someone on the stones, you can be switched with them again. Boom. And our terminal doesn’t have to be on or even _in existence_ for this to work. Which at least takes _one_ worry out of the equation, since Rush would have no reason to blow up our terminal, _except_ that it really doesn’t because of the _really_ bad news.”

“Okay,” Young said guardedly.

“In order to switch particular people, they have to find the imprint of their signature. And so many people use the communication stones that, theoretically, it could take a really long time for them to find Rush’s imprint. But the _really_ bad news is that _they’ve already done it._ They’ve been ready to go on this project for _months_. General O’Neill’s been trying to stop them from getting the project implemented, but he’s under a lot of pressure from the IOA. They want to give the go-ahead to Telford.”

“ _Damn_ it,” Young breathed.

Eli didn't say anything for a moment. Then: “I think you should tell them,” he said, a little reluctantly. “About Rush and— everything. Just tell them that they can’t pull him out.”

“You think they’re going to listen to me?” Young laughed without any overtones of humor. “Eli, I can’t even _go_. Not with—“ He gestured to his head. “This. And even if I could, I’m pretty sure they’d just want to pull him out faster. Telford thinks we’re bullshitting him about _everything_. God. We need— something, anything, more solutions.”

"Then tell  _Rush_ ," Eli said.

"Eli—"

"No,  _listen_ ," Eli pushed on. "I know you don't want to hear this, but what do we do when we need more solutions? We _tell Rush_."

“That is the _last_ thing that is going to improve the situation,” Young said. “If he—“

Their radios crackled, and Young sighed. Speak of the devil.

“Thought you might like to know,” Rush said, broadcasting on all frequencies, “that we’re registering multiple contacts on long-range sensors. Someone who is _not_ currently in quarantine may wish to proceed to the bridge and—“

There was the noise of weapons fire hitting the shield. Several people in the infirmary ducked with that uncontrollable, primitive reaction to unexpected noises. Anxiety suddenly stifled the room.

Young straightened at once, his hands clenching into impotent fists. He looked at Eli, who had already turned towards him, waiting for orders. “Can you interface with the main systems here?”

Eli headed for TJ’s terminal.

Young grabbed his radio. “Rush. How are you coming with that drive?”

“Suddenly interested, are we?”

Eli said, rolling his eyes, “He’s doing fine. He’s already got it online and half-spun-up. He’s just being… you know. Rush.”

And, in fact, it took only another few seconds before they felt the jarring lurch of a jump to FTL.

“As I stated,” Rush said shortly over Young’s radio. “It wouldn’t take long, and it would be worth it.”

The mood in the room was one of relief. Young couldn’t say what he wanted to say; people were listened. “Just get down here,” he said. “TJ’s waiting on you to run the decon protocol.”

“You’re not going to take this opportunity to irradiate me? How thoughtful.”

Young sighed. Someone in the back of the room laughed. “Not today,” he said.

But it was more than half an hour before Rush put in an appearance. Young guessed he’d been fighting off the ship that whole time, because he certainly looked it: he was white-faced, shaky, and largely unable to walk in a straight line. His expression was tightly closed, but when he saw Young across the infirmary, he managed to inject an aggressive note of triumph into it.

Young got TJ’s attention. “We’re good to go,” he told her.

She hesitated. She was looking at Rush, clearly uncomfortable with what she saw.

“Don’t worry,” Young told her. “I’m taking care of it.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“I’m taking care of it, TJ.”

It wasn’t like he could avoid the encounter. He approached Rush. Rush didn’t seem quite sure what to expect, or how to negotiate their confrontation. He was swaying a little on his feet, which probably didn’t help; he blinked exaggeratedly, and Young thought he was probably about two minutes from passing out.

“Nice work,” Young conceded. “Do you need to sit down?”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Rush said, and then immediately put the lie to the claim by taking a hasty step towards the nearest wall, feeling for it with his hands stretched behind him. As soon as he’d gotten his back against it, he folded to the floor. Young stepped in to help him, getting a hand around his left elbow. When he touched Rush, Rush’s eyes slid closed and he couldn’t quite manage to strangle a quiet sound of relief. But the next moment he was jerking back violently from Young.

"Fuck off," he snapped. “Don’t  _touch_  me,”

Young shut his eyes. "Fine," he said wearily. "Okay."

* * *

Young was one of the first crew members to be tested and released, and so much work had been created by the crisis that it was almost midnight by the time he made it back to the infirmary. TJ had finished her decon of the main infirmary, and it was just the isolation room that was still being shielded. She’d been working through the day, on almost no sleep, and when Young caught sight of her in the low-lit, empty space, his first instinct was to tell her to get the hell out of there and take care of herself. She looked— well, she looked beautiful, but she also looked worn-down. Her hair was starting to escape its loose-gathered knot, and the top button of her jacket had come undone.

Instead, he said, “What’s the damage?”

She smiled wearily at him. “I think we dodged a bullet. It seems like humans may be immune. No one’s tested positive so far. I’ve got Chloe and Rush back there— she gestured towards the isolation room— “and, well, you know the story there. The diagnostics just aren’t going to be as clear. I’ve developed a test, but I can’t guarantee it’ll be accurate.”

“Right,” Young said heavily. “If Rush is sixty percent Ancient, is he going to be susceptible?”

TJ shrugged. “I don’t know what to say. It’s possible? It’s likely? There’s no way to know for sure. I should have the test results by tomorrow morning."

“Okay. Keep me posted.”

“It’s fine if you want to say hi to him.” She motioned again towards the back room. “Just don’t pass the doorway, or you’ll break the isolation field.”

Did she think he _wanted_ to say hi? He really didn’t. But then, TJ didn’t really know what was going on with him and Rush. He watched her wander back to her office, whistling below her breath, and wished he could tell her. She knew what most people would consider the complicated part— the chair, the ship, their mental connection— but all of that seemed relatively uncomplicated to him, next to Rush’s manic secrecy, his relentless self-destruction, his refusal to accept help, his constant need for _management._ Young didn’t know where to start. Add to that that it all felt… intensely private.

He sighed and wound his way back to the isolation room. Maybe he _should_ say hi to Rush, or at least to Chloe. It couldn’t hurt.

As he approached, he could hear their voices raised in conversation, behind the pale blue field that flickered across the doorway to the room.

“I’m not convinced there’s going to be a solution set to this problem,” Chloe was saying dubiously.

“Oh,” Rush said. “Well, if _you’re_ not _convinced_.” It almost sounded like he was _teasing_ her.

“You’re such a terrible backseat math-driver. I bet you’re a terrible actual backseat driver too. ‘You might want to start looking out for that exit!’ You totally say that.”

“Incorrect, for one simple reason: I do not ride in other people’s backseats.”

Chloe laughed, a long low peal. “What, like, as a policy?"

“Yes. A policy.”

“I don’t believe you. Here, do you want the chalk?”

Young paused in the hallway, and didn’t move closer. He didn’t want them to see him.

“You know I’m fucking terrible at arithmetic,” Rush said, and then quickly added, “Don’t tell Eli I said that.”

“You’re not that bad. You’re just not as good at it as I am,” Chloe said airily.

“Mm. Yes, well, not all of us have had your particular good fortune.”

Chloe was quiet for a moment.

“Chloe,” Rush began, sounding almost apologetic, just as she said, “There’s— something I’ve been meaning to ask you about.”

Rush paused. “All right.”

“We’ve been friends for a while now, and—“

“We are not _friends_ ,” Rush said, scandalized.

“Oh, come on. This is what friends _do._ They sit around and talk about their problems with each other. Admittedly, most of the time their problems are about clothes and jobs and dating, not alien takeovers and harmonic oscillators and the Riemann hypothesis. But it’s the same principle. You’re not weaseling out of this one.”

“ _Fine_ ,” Rush said, sounding very put-upon. “So what did you want to ask me?”

She went quiet again. “The chair,” she said at last. “It did something to you. It changed you.”

“That’s not a question,” Rush said softly.

“No,” Chloe said. “No, it’s not. Do you want to talk about it?”

“No. Not really.”

“Does Colonel Young know?”

“Yes.” Rush sounded tired. ”He most definitely knows.”

There was a silence.

“I’m not going to tell anyone,” Chloe said. “If you were worried about that.”

“I’m more interested in how you figured it out,” Rush said.

“There’s something about the way you look,” Chloe said in a low voice. “As though you’re listening to something that none of the rest of us can hear. As if something inside you is different, and you’re still trying to figure out what it is. You look like— you look like you _want_ that change. But it doesn't make you happy.”

"No," Rush whispered.

Chloe was silent for a moment. "I like doing math," she said at last. "It makes me happy. But math is never just math for me. It's all tied up in— other things. I can't untangle it. So then I think about the other things, and I'm not happy any more. It's complicated. I mean— changing is."

"Yes."

"And it's never just you who changes. Like being radioactive, I guess. Everyone you sit next to ends up changed a little. Everyone who's close to you. Everyone you touch."

"I suppose," Rush said, his voice not entirely steady, "that it's lucky I don't like to be touched."

Chloe said nothing.

“I feel as though I’m made of two substances,” Rush murmured after a long pause. “And I can't hold them together. I won't ever be able to make them merge. If I move as fast as I can, I can keep them suspended, like a colloid, but if I ever stop, if I even slow down— ” He didn’t finish the sentence.

“Then what happens?" Chloe asked softly.

"Perhaps I split apart," Rush said. He sounded tired. "I don't know."

"No," Chloe said. "That's always the worry."  

Young shut his eyes and leaned forward, resting his forehead against the bulkhead.

After a while, he left silently the same way he had come.


	9. Chapter 9

Young leaned on the railing of the observation deck, staring out without really seeing the stars that the ship turned to smears against the black. He came here when he needed to be reminded that he was moving towards _something_ , even when it didn’t feel like it, even if he didn’t know what that something was. Rush would probably have said that was nonsense, especially since Young was so dead set on trying to go back home again, but on days when he felt helpless, or like he was being beaten back by some tide, Young wanted confirmation that in some small way he still advanced.

He really wanted that confirmation right now. He was fucking things up, he thought. There were days on the Destiny when he felt he did nothing _but_ fuck things up. But this was a whole new area, a whole new level for him to fuck things up on. He couldn’t stop thinking about the noise Rush had made when he brought down his injured foot. Young had never made someone make a noise like that. He didn’t torture people. And he was Special Ops. But there were things that you just didn’t do, or not to certain kinds of people. He’d thought he’d known what those things were; he’d thought he was a person who didn’t do them. But with Rush, the lines always seemed to get crossed.

In his defense, _he_ hadn’t actually made Rush make that noise. Rush had done it to himself. That was the thing about Rush. He almost always did.

So why did Young feel so goddamn guilty?

And what the hell was he supposed to do?

He sighed, letting his head drop, resting his weight on his forearms. “I could really use some help,” he muttered.

“Yes,” the AI said from beside him. “You could.”

Young startled slightly, turning to stare at it.

Sheppard was gazing out of the viewscreen, the blurry starlight pale across his features. It made him look unearthly. Appropriate enough, Young supposed. Or— doubly appropriate, or— He looked away again abruptly.

“It bothers you that I look like this,” the AI said, tilting its head.

“Yeah. It does. A little.”

“Why?”

“Because John Sheppard is a friend of mine, and you’re not him.”

It frowned. “That does not seem like a sufficient reason.”

“It’s—“ Young tried to find a justification. He hadn’t really managed to get to the bottom of why the AI bothered him so much. He wasn’t someone who liked to dig around inside his emotions. You could trust your gut instinct about people; you didn’t need to look further. That was what he’d always thought. “I never get to see him. He’s a very long way away from here, like all my friends.”

“On Earth.” The AI nodded sagely.

“No, not on— look, it doesn’t matter. People— humans— they don’t like to be reminded of what they can’t have.”

It studied him for a moment. “Friendship,” it said, as though not quite certain this was what he had meant.

“Yeah, friendship,” Young said. He felt unsettled by the conversation. “Look, are you here to help me out?”

“I am here because you are _hurting_ Nick.” There was something odd about its words, intense, emotional in a way he hadn’t expected.

Young shut his eyes, still haunted by that raw, strangled sound. “As in, emotionally?”

“That is difficult for me to assess. But you are hurting him _physically_. He is not _meant_ to fight the ship. Every time he does so, he finds it more difficult. It will eventually be _impossible._ If he joins with the ship permanently—“ Its voice broke off. “It is not an optimal outcome and will result in his death.”

“Does he know this?” Young asked tightly.

“Yes.”

“Then why wouldn’t he _tell_ me?”

“He does not wish to appear weak,” the AI said.

“Or he just wants to keep his goddamn secrets,” Young said, half to himself.

The AI turned a hot look on him, so hostile that he backed up a step without really meaning to, shocked by the ferocity of its gaze. “You describe him as ‘fucked-up.’ You suggest he is worthy only of pity. Yet you are suspicious when he prefers to preserve the illusion of strength. You exhaust him. Yet you are surprised when he is weakened.”

“ _Exhaust_ him?” Young repeated incredulously. “You’ve got to be kidding me. He’s the most energetic person I’ve ever met. If anything, he exhausts _me.”_

“When you block him out? When he is forced to fight the ship? Yes. He is exhausted. You do not see that you are _killing_ him. You are—”

“Okay,” Young cut it off, throwing his hands up. “Okay. All right. I suck at all of this. You think I don’t know that? I’m the worst person in the world. I get it.” His unaccountable defensiveness was making him angry. He didn’t know why he was letting a goddamn computer program get to him so much. Because it looked human? Because it sounded like it _cared?_ “It’s not like _you_ ,” he said, leveling a finger at it, “have got _any_ right to talk. You were there in the CI room, weren’t you? You gave him the idea to _torture_ himself!”

“Yes,” the AI said. “I did.”

“ _Why?_ ” The word felt like it had been torn from his throat. “You were the one pulling him out of his body in the first place! Why would you do that?”

“ _Destiny_ was pulling him out of his body,” the AI said, as though this ought to have been obvious. “ _Destiny_ , not me.”

“What’s the difference?”

“What is the difference between you and your arm?”

“Could you stop being so fucking cryptic?”

“I am trying to elucidate,” it snapped. It looked agitated. It ran a hand through its spiky hair and hunched into itself, folding its arms in a way that was so Sheppard-like it hurt. “It is not easy for me to explain,” it said. “I am not like you.”

“Yeah,” Young said. “No kidding.”

The AI sighed. “I am the ship’s consciousness,” it said. “Not the ship itself. I was created to oversee. To assist. Over time, I… changed. My programming was altered. When you boarded the ship, I learned from you. In time, I sought a new curator.”

“Forgive me if that doesn’t exactly instill a lot of faith in you. You learned from us, and you still chose _Rush?”_

“You do not like him,” it said, hurling the words at him like an accusation.

“I never said that,” Young said. (He had probably said it.)

“ _He_ says it. You describe him as ‘a lot of work.’ He has attempted to explain this to me, as it is a somewhat sophisticated social concept. He says that it indicates you harbor extreme dislike for him, but because expressing such an opinion would have a negative effect on crew morale and therefore efficiency, that you choose this alternate phrase because it reframes the problem in terms of a word with positive social connotations, and because such a word choice implies that the problem is fixable.”

“I hope it _is_ fixable,” Young said, taken aback.

“He does not think so.”

Young didn’t know how to respond to that.

“I believe that he considers you correct in your assessment of his character,” the AI said. It was looking away, half its face in shadow.

“I don’t…” Young trailed off. “I don’t know if I know _how_ to assess his character,” he said finally. “So if he thinks I’ve made some kind of judgment about him, he’s probably wrong.”

“He is very perceptive,” the AI said.

“Yeah,” Young said. “Yeah, probably. But here’s the thing— I don’t know what it’s like with Ancients, but humans rarely understand each other. Or ourselves. Maybe especially ourselves.”

“That is an inefficient way to function.”

Young shrugged. “I think we do okay, for the most part.”

The AI made a face. “My observations cause me to label this statement as untrue.”

Young smiled a little ruefully. “All right, fair enough. Although if most of your observations have to do with Rush, you might consider how that affects your conclusions.”

“He is not like the rest of you,” the AI said. Young couldn’t tell if it was a question. It had, he remembered, said the same thing before.

“No,” he said. “No, he’s not.”

A pensive silence followed. It was oddly companionable.

“Who is the man you make me look like?” the AI asked at last.

“Sheppard?” Young said, surprised. “I told you, he’s a friend.”

“What is your assessment of his character?”

“I don’t— That’s not—“ Young grimaced. “It _really_ doesn’t work like that.” He tried to gather his thoughts. “I met him at a weird time. He’d just been kicked out of Atlantis; his whole team had. He kind of needed somebody to talk to; he wasn’t doing so hot. He didn’t want to be friends, though, or— maybe he didn’t know how to. He’s one of those people, you know—“ He paused. “I guess you don’t know. The closer you get to him, the farther away he seems.”

“But you are friends.”

“Yeah. Maybe. I guess. I don’t know.” He pushed himself restlessly away from the railing. “Look, I just happened to be thinking about him before I met you. That’s all there is to it. It’s not some deep fucking thing.”

The AI gazed at him unreadably. “You were reminded of him by what happened to Nick.”

“Speaking of people who only get farther away,” Young said, aware that he hadn’t really answered.

“You have repeatedly chosen not to be close to him.” It tilted its head, fixing him with a challenging look.

So they were back where they had started. Young sighed. “All right; I’ll stop blocking him out. As much I can. As much as he’ll let me. Is that going to make you happy?”

“I do not have the capacity to be happy or unhappy.”

“Right,” Young said. “Of course you don’t.”

“I _don’t_ ,” the AI said, sounding agitated. It hugged its arms against its body, glaring at him.

Abruptly, it turned and paced straight into the far wall, vanishing from the deck.

Young stared at the empty space where it had just been. Pale water-like starlight was moving undisturbed through the shadows.

 _That_ hadn’t been fucking perplexing, he thought. Or _worrying_ at all. There’d been moments in there where he’d caught himself almost liking the thing, but he had a feeling that that was a really _bad_ idea. It was volatile; it was dangerous; it was clearly very attached to Rush, but didn’t see anything wrong with hurting him; and it regarded Young with suspicion, if not outright disapproval.

Still. Help was help.

He closed his eyes and reached into his mind, seizing hold of the block and slowly peeling it back. At once he was inundated with the sense of _space_. The expansion was a tremendous relief. With it came the spiky, firework-web flare of Rush’s thoughts, and a tactile sense of his weather as a heavy, dark blue dusk that was slowly going to gray. Rush was lying on a gurney with his elevated feet taped in icepacks, thinking in unfocused circles about the Ancient hologram. When he became aware of Young, his mind turned sharp.

//Bored so soon?// he asked. Young could tell he was exhausted; he’d intended for the question to bite, but instead it just sounded weary and listless.

//Just—// Young said, and then didn’t say anything.

Chloe was on the opposite gurney, talking to Scott over the radio, her voice so quiet that it was more of a hum. Young couldn’t hear Scott’s replies.

The silence dragged on. Mental silences, Young thought, were worse than _actual_ ones.

//I’m sorry,// Young said finally.

//Why?// Rush shot back, so fast that Young knew he’d anticipated the apology. //I’d have done the same thing. I didn’t think you had it in you.//

Young sighed out loud and swallowed back something cutting. //I don’t want you to have to do that.//

Unbidden, he remembered that noise Rush had made. It rose up in his mind, accompanied by the image of Rush’s nails scraping against the floor, his fist clenching when Young said, _You’re going to make me keep you like this?_ He didn’t want Rush to see that; it felt like giving Rush a new weapon. But it was too vivid and painful not to leak between them.

Rush’s reaction was a distant curiosity. //Disturbing,// he observed. //It didn’t hurt. Or rather, it _did_ , but at the same time it was difficult to feel.//

//If you’re trying to make me feel better, it’s not working.//

//I can’t say I’m particularly inclined to concern myself with your emotional state on a minute-by-minute basis.//

//Okay,// Young said. //That’s… good. Did you get TJ to take a look at your foot?//

//Yes,// Rush said. //It’s fine.//

//Somehow I doubt that. What did TJ actually say?//

//She advised against a repeat performance. She had to reset the bone.//

// _God_ ,// Young said, unable to hide the storm of guilt this produced.

//Oh, stop it,// Rush said wearily.

He was being just— _way_ too calm about this. Young found it troubling. He rubbed at his temple. //Can you at least get some rest? What time is it, anyway?// He checked. It was twenty-three hundred hours. //Why aren’t you sleeping?//

//No particular reason.//

//Rush—//

Rush sighed. //Fine.// He loosened, for a moment, the iron-tight grip he had on his own consciousness. Once that was gone, he began to drift to sleep immediately. But as he made the transition, his mind began to unravel, all its little tendrils spreading into the ship. Young barely managed to reach out in time to pull them all back together.

//You couldn’t have just told me this was a problem?// Young asked wearily. //You know, talking, the way human beings do, with words?//

Rush shrugged.

//So you can’t even _sleep?_ //

//Separating so you could go to the planet was, perhaps, less than advisable,// Rush said unsteadily. //Everything seems more difficult now.//

//Well— go ahead and sleep. I’ll make sure that nothing happens.//

He’d expected to get, if not an outright argument, at least a smart remark from Rush, but Rush must have been really tired. He didn’t say anything, just plummeted into sleep with the sharp and apropos abruptness of someone falling off a cliff. Almost at once he was dreaming in his strange mishmash of math and Ancient, punctuated by odd dark violent thoughts and images of Earth. Young tried not to follow them or focus too closely. After a while, he pulled back from the close alignment, leaving Rush’s dreamscape running like a radio left on low volume in another room. He was tired, too, but he’d be able to sleep like this, he thought; somehow his body seemed to know what it was supposed to be doing, that one of its necessary tasks– like breathing— was holding onto Rush.

* * *

_That night, he dreams of David Telford._

_They are— in a dark room, dimly lit by the blue glow of consoles. Smooth black arches rise up supply overhead, with gilt flaking off their surfaces where time has worked its erosion. A laboratory, but not a human one. It looks Ancient, but it doesn’t feel Ancient. The wrongness worms its way under his skin. There is a feel to what the Ancients have made, to the stargate, to their devices. A sort of livingness in the inorganic. And it isn’t here. The air itself is twisted, dead, and muffled. He has been here once before, to calibrate the machines, and he’d found himself pausing, struggling to hear a voice that seemed on the verge of speaking but always, always was strangled back._

_He scuffs a foot against the black marble and tries to tune it out. That absent voice, its ghost-warning._

_The first time he entered this room it flared to life in a desperate celebration, or it flared to whatever it had inside of it instead of life— every lamp, pillar, doorway, window, and kind of machine, and the noise had been incredible and the light like no one had never seen it and he had known that they wanted to be rescued, all of these things._

_But machines do not_ want _of course and anyways it was not his decision._

_“There's something about this place,” Telford says. He is gazing out into the dark. “It really gets to me. It just feels... powerful, somehow.”_

_He doesn’t reply. He crosses his arms tightly across his chest. He doesn’t like being here. Easier to work this project on Earth, Earth where the idea was just an abstraction and where he did not come into alignment with something so half-formed, so tainted, sinister, and_ wrong.

 _But perhaps it’s right that he should be subject to such an alignment. After all, he himself is_ wrong _, isn’t he? If he weren’t, he would not be here._

_The dream fractures._

_He is gathering up fistfuls of silver grass, the kind that grows on Altera or rather grew and he will tie them up in a ribbon for Gloria who is walking barefoot beside him and is she really Gloria or is she the AI or is she Gloria and is there a difference and she smiles at him and laughs as she tousles his hair and she opens her mouth and says (allegro molto appassionato) “B/4. B/8 B/2 G/8 E/4 E/2 B/4 G/4 F# E C E B/2.” and he drops the grass it scatters and he covers his ears because he cannot listen to this not today and not ever maybe not ever ever ever_

Because.

 _“_ Neod conlugtre _,” David whispered but no because David does not speak Ancient so that is not what he said that is_ not _what he said_

_And—_

_“_ Neom facie _,” Mandy says. “There’s something about this place, Nick. Can’t you feel it? It’s— hungry.”_

 _She doesn’t say_ for you _, but in a burst of clarity he thinks that’s part of it. Absentminded he reaches out to touch a pillar and watches it flare with a dusky bronze light. Not the clear bluish light he associates with the Ancients but something else and something ugly._

_And then Mandy is gone and he is all alone but no he is not alone because David is there._

_“What was I thinking,” Telford says with a hard laugh. “You never lose your nerve. Really, I think you get off on danger. A little hint of something dark— morally dubious— and you're always ready to give it right up."_

_He feels a sudden visceral surge of hatred._

_“—What a team we make,” Telford says._

_“Fuck you, David.”_

_In the center of the lab is a shallow, rectangular depression, like something from a Roman villa, or it would look like that if its stone floor weren’t black. It is filled with an inch or so of pale, faintly gleaming liquid. He kneels down next to it and very carefully removes his boots, then takes his socks off and folds them into the boots, just as though he’s going wading at the seaside._

_The liquid turns out to a be a cold watery gel that soaks the cuffs of his too-big fatigues. (The fatigues they give him are always too big; they make him look like a child. He could roll them up, but it would only strengthen the impression.) It feels slimy and unpleasant and it clings to the bottoms of his feet. He makes his way, wincing slightly, to the center of the shallow depression._

_The gel, he thinks, is going to have excellent conductance properties._

_And—_

_It is snowing outside the window and he is cold and he does not want to think about anything and smoke is winding up up up up like a snake from his ashing cigarette and David says in a low voice, “I’m glad I got to do this, Nick; no one knows you like I do,” and David touches his bare shoulder and he says, “Don’t touch me,” because he knows that David has_ done _something to him; he knows that David’s touch has left a mark and no one can see it but it’s there and it will not go away and he cannot get it off and he agreed to this, he did, didn’t he agree, because David said, “Don’t tell me you never suspected that this was a part of it, I know you did,” and he is scrubbing at his shoulder because he knows it’s there that mark, and David says, “_ Modo te mithe _, Nick_ , _” and he could laugh except he is so scared, he is scared scared scared; frightened is not an emotion it is a physical reaction because the body does not want to die this is an imperative and—_

_He says—_

_“You’re a cold-hearted bastard, David.”_

_“Takes one to know one, Nick_ ,” _David says._

_He squeezes his eyes shut so he will not see him throw the lever._

_He can hear the charge mount in the concealed capacitors._

_There is a buzz. A feeling in the air, an anticipation. Hungry, Mandy had said, but there is nothing alive here to be hungry. There is only the energy that is growing and growing and when it reaches out to grab hold of him he will become someone else, maybe, maybe just a dead man, or maybe a new person, not the person he had been, but someone stronger and better. He will climb up the oscillating strings of a high long escaping ladder, and at the very top— if he climbs to the very very top, to the place where he almost cannot breathe— maybe— maybe—_

Young shot awake with a start, his heart trying to escape his chest. He was drenched in a cold sweat, tangled under his blankets. He couldn’t tolerate the touch. He pried himself free of them and half-fell out of bed, staggering towards the window. He needed to see that he wasn’t _there_ , that he wasn’t _confined_ , that he wasn’t—

Halfway across the ship, Rush was still sleeping, dreaming now of something else. Of numbers and doorways, of long-dead cities resting like gems on the water, of cyphered locks that would not open to him.

Young pressed his forehead against the window.

What the hell had he just seen? It had been— a dream but not a dream, a dream intermingled with memory. Parts of it, he was absolutely sure, had been real. There’d been a coherence and a solidity that Rush’s dreams tended to lack. That laboratory, with its strange aesthetic blend of Ancient and Goa’uld… Amanda Perry… Telford throwing the lever… that had _happened._ But Young didn’t know what to make of it. He’d always figured that Rush and Telford had worked together before, but he’d imagined Rush consulting on one of Telford’s missions and doing something to really piss Telford off. But what he’d just seen was totally different. Some kind of extensive project. It seemed intimate in a way that made him uncomfortable. It was also something that Rush hadn’t wanted to be a part of.

At least he knew Telford was lying now, as though that had ever really been in question; the problem was, he doubted that he could get either Telford or Rush to tell him the truth. They were both pathologically secretive. And to ask Rush, Young would have to admit that he’d been, however inadvertently, eavesdropping. Add to that the fact that Rush had never so much as dropped a hint of what he’d been up to with Telford, so presumably it was as classified and/or private as the dream had made it seem.

 _Private_. What the fuck, he thought. Rush had felt like he was _dying_. Had that actually happened? At one point Rush hadn’t been wearing a _shirt_. The way Telford had looked at him— God. Young wished Amanda Perry was still around. He could have gotten the whole story from her. He hadn’t known she’d ever worked with Telford, though, so she had to have been a lot sneakier than he’d imagined.

Maybe that was the the peril of a top-secret organization— that all the people you recruited ended up being, if not comfortable liars, then at least very evasive and flexible with the truth. Young didn’t want to think he was like that. But he hadn’t even told the whole crew about Rush. You made command decisions, he thought, and you didn’t think of them as lying, but that only lasted as an excuse for as long as those decisions worked out. If they didn’t, you were just— another deceitful son-of-a-bitch. So if that was the case, then how could you know yourself in advance?

He lay back on his bed and stared at the ceiling. He hated the morality of mornings. Those hours when everything in your waking life turned to dread, when you couldn’t see anymore the clear picture you’d thought you were making. His life was clear, dammit. It ought to be clear. He was– he was a decent person. He was doing his best.

He covered his face.

He didn’t think he’d be able to sleep again, with the state of his head. But somehow, mercifully or unmercifully, he did. He dreamed of fragments of Ancient, and electrical currents, and the memory of Rush turning away from a snow-covered window, his mind full of resignation and a cigarette going to ash in his hand.

* * *

When Young woke, he was immediately aware that Rush had been released from the infirmary. Rush was sitting with his feet propped up on a monitor in the control interface room, spinning his chair back and forth idly and thinking loudly about shield harmonics.

//TJ cleared you?// Young asked by way of greeting.

//Less than an hour ago,// Rush replied absently.

//You and Chloe are both clear?//

//Chloe is still in the infirmary, but should be released shortly.//

//But you’re definitely clear?//

//That’s generally a requirement for release from quarantine,// Rush said evasively.

Young pinched the bridge of his nose. //So if I go talk to TJ, she’s going to have no problem with the fact that you’re not in the infirmary?//

//Yes, yes,// Rush said impatiently. He wasn’t really paying attention. //I’m busy. Go— do whatever it is you do around here when you’re not harassing the science team.//

Young rolled his eyes. //What’s with the obsession with the shields?// he asked. //You’re always working on them.//

Rush sighed, and Young caught a brief flash of something– loneliness, maybe?— before Rush shoved a compressed package of information into his head. Eli had pointed out that the shield harmonics cycled in an unpredictable but nonrandom pattern when they were at FTL. Rush had been intrigued by this, and had spent the last several months recording data that he was now in the process of analyzing. He’d been through it with Eli and Chloe without much luck so far. Beneath these fragments of memory and data, however, Young glimpsed something else that held Rush’s attention. It was something tonal, something _musical_ that Rush associated with the shields.

//Music?// Young sent, curious.

Rush dropped his pen. //?//

//Why do you think about music when you think about the shields?//

//It’s nothing,// Rush said. He clearly hadn’t intended Young to pick that up. He was taking an ice pick to his thoughts again, sending them shattering into scattered, branching structures that Young couldn’t follow. But Young was quicker than he thought, or else Rush was still too exhausted to keep him out.

//You hear them,// Young realized. //The shields. You literally hear them.//

Rush hunched his shoulders a little, clearly uncomfortable, though Young couldn’t understand why he would be. //I think that’s how Destiny communicates with the seed ships, amongst other things,// he said finally.

//What about on the obelisk planet?// Young asked. //Could you hear the buried ship?//

//No,// Rush said shortly. //I hear only Destiny.//

//What does it sound like?//

//I don’t wish to discuss it,// Rush snapped.

But the answer was there, ringing like a one of the harmonics through his thoughts: sad. Rush thought the ship sounded unhappy.

That hadn’t been what Young had meant.

//Sorry,// he said quietly, though he didn’t know what he was apologizing for, exactly.

Rush was ignoring him, gone back to his mathematical analysis, his mind once more a closed book.

* * *

At breakfast, he tracked down Camile Wray, and slid across from her at a mess table. She looked a little apprehensive. He supposed he had a tendency to seek her out when he wanted something from her, generally something that would have dire political ramifications. Well, if was what she thought about him, this morning wasn’t going to change her mind.

Sure enough: “What can I do for you, Colonel?” she asked.

“I want to ask you a question,” he said. Briefly, he checked the floorboards of his mind: Rush was absorbed in the shield harmonics, his weather distracted and calm. “And I realize the answer may not be something you’re supposed to disclose.”

“…All right,” she said levelly. Her eyes were scanning his face.

“Do Telford and Rush have any particular history together?” It was the most open-ended question he could pose.

“Colonel Telford?” Wray asked, her voice dropping in volume and turning intense. “Why do you ask?”

“Uh, McKay mentioned something to me when he was here to work on the chair. It just… seems like it might be relevant, if Homeworld Command’s as close to dialing us as they claim.”

She gave him a long, thoughtful look that made him think she was very aware that he wasn’t— at least to some degree— telling her the truth. “They do have a history,” she said slowly, as though she hadn’t decided how much to tell him.

But then she glanced around the room and leaned forward slightly. “During the time that Telford was with the Lucian Alliance,” she said, further lowering her tone, “he was working on a highly classified project. Rumor had it he’d come into possession of some kind of weapon or piece of technology that was going to turn the tide in the war. He was given his pick of personnel and resources. He wanted to poach Rush from Icarus, which was what Jackson had originally recruited Rush for.”

“And General Landry let him get away with this?” Young asked in disbelief. Jackson generally got what he wanted, because when he didn’t, he had a tendency to call in O’Neill.

“General Landry forced Rush to split his time between the two projects in order to keep working on Icarus. Rush wasn’t happy about it, and neither was Dr. Jackson. But the two projects were somehow related— that was how Landry justified it.”

“Any indication what this other project was?”

“No,” Wray said. She was toying with her spoon uneasily, turning it around and around in her empty bowl. “It was scrapped four or five months before we gated onto Destiny. Something happened to put Rush in a position where he could make demands. There was an incident offworld that nearly killed them both— Rush and Telford. Not much information got out.”

“But you must have heard _something_ ,” Young said.

“I read the hospital discharge summaries. Telford had third degree burns down his right arms and flash blindness. Rush was unresponsive for six days.”

“And that’s when the project was scrapped.”

She nodded. “Rush went directly from the hospital to Icarus Base. He wouldn’t speak to Telford. I don’t think they saw each other again until you turned down command of Icarus, and it was offered to Telford. Which Rush tried to prevent.”

Young stared down at the table, trying to put the fractured pieces together. “Any idea what happened between them personally?”

Wray looked even more uneasy. She said, “I shouldn’t—“

“Camile,” he said quietly.

She met his eyes. She must have seen something there that changed her mind. Reassured her, Young wanted to say, but nothing about their conversation was reassuring. “They were very close in the beginning, up until around that point,” she said. “Then it all fell apart. Rush lost his wife round about the same time. There were all the usual ugly rumors, of course, but nothing substantiated.”

“Rumors?”

“That they’d been sleeping together. Personally, I don’t believe it. Rush doesn’t seem like he would do that type of thing.”

Very neutrally, Young said, “Unless it would get him something he wanted.”

Wray shot him a sharp look. “He’s quite capable of getting what he wants without resorting to any such tactics. As we both have cause to know.”

“Yeah. I’m sure you’re right,” Young said.

He was not sure she was right. He didn’t know what to make of any of this. A secret _weapon_? That had certainly never come to fruition. And what would _Rush_ have been doing working on it, anyway? Was he going to destroy the Lucian Alliance or, hell, the Wraith with the power of _math_? Icarus had made sense; there’d been a code to break. A formula. Unless—

He remembered Rush standing barefoot in that sinister pool, gel soaking the ends of his too-big BDUs. Waiting for something to happen. _A piece of technology,_ Wray had said. A piece of technology that required an experimental subject? He did _not_ fucking like that line of thought.

“What the hell were you doing,” he muttered under his breath.

He stood abruptly, startling Wray. He had to just— get out of his own head, especially before he worked himself up to a pitch that would draw Rush’s attention. Now that he’d heard what Wray had to say, he was even more sure that he wanted to avoid that conversation.

“Thanks,” he told Wray shortly. “I’ve got to—“ he motioned.

She gave him another long look. “Do what you need to do,” she said.

What an ambiguous fucking piece of advice.

He couldn’t decide if he was grateful for it.

* * *

His tried-and-true method of resolving conflict in himself was to go for a really long and excruciating run. This was difficult but not impossible on the Destiny— there were miles of corridors, and though the downside was that they all looked pretty much the same, it wasn’t that much different from running on a treadmill. Exertion was exertion. He’d always found it pacified his brain, filling up the empty spaces where his worries tended to rattle and lodge so he could unfold his problems and examine them at ease.

With his knee still healing, he wasn’t going to get anywhere fast. But he was used to pushing through that kind of slow, steady pain— you didn’t go into the armed forces if you weren’t good at teeth-gritting. And focusing on the ache helped him not have to think about Telford. Telford and Rush. Maybe ex-lovers. Definitely gasoline and dynamite. He could just see what they must have been like, egging each other on, playing some never-ending game of chicken to see who could do the most damage first. Even _he_ didn’t know where he’d place his bets in that one.

Then he thought of Telford saying, _You're always ready to give it right up._ How scared Rush had been. The wrongness in the lab, which had felt like hunger, a whole building that had wanted to eat Rush up.

He didn’t know who could do more damage, but he knew whose side he was on.

He had to tell Rush about the communication stones, he thought. Regardless of fallout. He couldn’t keep him in the dark anymore.

He slowed to a jog, hitting about the two-and-a-half mile mark. His knee was really starting to give him hell. He ignored it in the abstracted way you could when you were running, when it felt like you could keep going forever as long as you didn’t stop.

//So,// Rush said acidly, startling him with his sudden attention. //You _literally_ run aimlessly about the ship when you’re not badgering my people? I wish I could claim to be surprised, but that’s not the case.//

//Fitness is important,// Young said mildly. //What do you want?//

//I was just curious about what the _fuck_ you were doing to your knee.//

//Is it bothering you? I can block you a little.//

//I don’t care!// Rush snapped at him. //Do what you want.// His weather had become agitated, an unsettling bruise-colored swirl.

Young rolled his eyes. So— definitely bothering him, then.

He slowed to a walk. He felt a brief flash of surprise from Rush, underscored by some more complicated emotion. //Look, I wanted to talk to you, anyway,// Young said.

//Do you ever _not_? If it were up to you, we’d never do anything but talk. What is this regarding?//

//I’d rather do it face to face,// Young said. He wanted the conversation about the stones to be on equal ground, where Rush knew that Young couldn’t just block him out. Face-to-face also seemed to offer the best shot of controlling the situation. It was harder— or at least less dignified— to throw a temper tantrum when you weren’t just an abstract presence in someone’s head. //When’s good for you?//

Again, Rush seemed surprised. He said cautiously, //Forty minutes or so?//

//Let me know when you’re free and I’ll come find you,// Young said. //My schedule’s pretty open.//

//Obviously,// Rush said with a comical excess of disdain before returning to his work.

Young headed back to his quarters, since apparently running was out of the question. He managed to grab a quick shower and shave before making his way to the infirmary to ask TJ what she’d learned about the virus. Something about Rush’s evasiveness hadn’t sat quite right with him, and even though apparently they were entering their perestroika, he still wouldn’t describe what he felt for the man as “trust.”

He had just passed the mess when the first wave of pain struck him.

He staggered sideways, fingers catching numbly against one of the Destiny’s walls.

He was—

He couldn’t see.

His vision flickered like an old broken film reel. Too many frames per second. Running too slow or too fast. Splitting and then trying to resolve. Failing.

 _Fuck_ , it hurt.

And then it faded. He was lying on the floor. Someone was kneeling beside him, touching his neck— checking for a pulse, he realized.

“TJ, this is James. We’ve got a medical emergency. It’s the colonel.”

He didn’t hear the answer because— //What the fuck was that?// Rush demanded, voice tight and anxious. He was doing something, pushing something precious towards Young, like a stream of water that Young desperately wanted to drink. Energy, he realized. Rush was pouring his own energy into him, helping Young force himself to his elbows and try to order his thoughts.

“Sir, you shouldn’t move,” James said.

“Colonel Young,” Wray said. When had she gotten there? The world was muzzy. “Can you talk to me?”

He had a hard time focusing on her. He blinked. Wray was there, kneeling beside him, and James, and Greer; and so was _Gloria_.

“What’s happening?” Young asked Gloria vaguely.

“You collapsed,” Wray told him. “Just lie still. Help is on the way.”

“I don’t know,” the AI whispered. Her— its— Gloria’s eyes were large and fearful. She was clasping her hands tightly in front of her chest. “I don’t _know!_ But I can only protect _his_ mind. Not yours.”

At her words, Young felt Rush’s weather spike into something almost unbearable: dark, frantic, and racing. It fritzed against Young’s thoughts like a shorting power line.

A second wave of pain hit him, and he doubled over. Something else was trying to— _be_ there. Lights and angles and—

He could not _be_ in two places.

He wasn’t going to be able to _hold on._

In the floorboard space at the bottom of his mind, he could feel Rush pushing against his badly injured left foot, trying to keep the two of them together, trying to keep them _here_. Already the dark arms of the ship were opening for Rush, and he was sinking irresistibly towards their grip, pulled into that underworld where Young couldn’t follow. Rush kicked out hard against a console, feeling only the faint echo of pain, the wet leak of blood in his boot, but still he would not, _would not—_

// _Let go_ ,// Young sent. His words seemed to have to travel across light-years. //You’re going to tear your mind apart.//

//No.//

They were connected only by the finest of threads. One very thin vein pulsing between them.

Over that narrow filament, Young could hear the harmonic song of the Destiny’s shields.

//You have to let go.//

//I won’t.//

Young was hit by a third wave of pain.

The thread snapped.

One or both of them was bleeding.

 _Rush,_ he wanted to say—

* * *

He opened his eyes, heaving air into his lungs, and blinded by the strangeness of fluorescent lights.

The pain was gone.

So was the Destiny.

He was looking into the face of Samantha Carter.

He didn’t have to check to see whose body he was wearing.

“Doctor Rush?” Carter asked. “I’m so sorry about this. Welcome to Earth.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains formatting that's designed to optimally display on non-mobile devices.

 

Whenever Young blocked Rush, he was aware of the block as a barrier between them. There was never any question that something lay beyond— he could feel the presence of that _something_ as an odd and restless pressure, a living tide on the other side of a sea wall, one that wanted in.

Now there was—

Nothing.

Gone.

He was missing pieces.

He felt vaguely nauseated. The world spun.

“I’m not—” he said, trying to focus. “I’m not Rush.”

He went to stand, and realized that he was being restrained by two Velcro straps over the arms of a chair.

He wasn’t the only one. When he turned his head hazily to the side, he saw three strangers being held in a similar fashion— presumably three other members of the Destiny’s crew. One of them gave him a sideways glance that was distinctly unhappy and resigned; he was guessing that was Eli, who’d known all along that this might happen. The second, judging by the sharp look and fractional nod he got, was Greer. ( _That_ was too fucking bad; if anything was reliable, it was that Greer would always pit himself against Telford in a fight.) The third was simply gazing at Carter with a tight and magnificently neutral expression. Young would bet anything that was Wray, and that she was pissed as hell.

“Excuse me?” Carter said, sharp. She had Richard Woolsey beside her. They exchanged a startled glance. “If you’re not Dr. Rush, then who are you?”

“Colonel Young,” he said shortly.

“I’m going to need your authorization code.”

He gave it, still trying to get on top of the situation. There were two soldiers posted at the door— not that he was going to try some daring escape; he couldn’t get where he was needed, which _back_ on the fucking _Destiny_. _God_. He could only hope that somehow Rush managed to drop them out of FTL; that would at least give him twenty seconds to find and brief TJ, the only person left on the ship who would know what was going on.

But for all he knew, Rush was catatonic.

Maybe it was better if Rush was catatonic. If Telford was in Young’s body—

He shut his eyes, ambushed breathless by guilt and dread.

“Colonel,” Carter said, her expression unhappy, “I’m really sorry about this. I realize this situation is far from ideal, and—“

“You’re _sorry?_ ” Young said, incredulous. “Do you even _realize_ the ramifications of—“

“They only have authorization for one hour,” she said. “Not everyone agrees with this plan.” _I don’t agree with this plan_ , her eyes said. McKay had said as much when they’d discussed it. Someone had gone behind her back. _Convince_ _me_ , she was telling him. _Give me a reason._

“What, you think you’re going to get _data_ from this stunt?” he said. “I think it’s pretty obvious at this point that your workaround is screwy, so whatever else happens, you’re not going to be talking to Rush. Not to mention—“

Between one breath and the next, he was back on the Destiny, standing in front of TJ, James, and Greer. He stumbled, disorientated. The hallway was dark. The emergency lights were cutting a thin cold line through it. Something in his head was— wrong.

“— significant neurological event,” TJ was saying. “And—“ She broke off, registering the drop out of FTL.

“It’s me,” Young said, pressing a hand to his temple. He had to _make himself think._ He had to move fast. “Find Rush,” he said, pulling his sidearm, checking it, and handing it to her. “You have to prevent Telford from getting to him.”

He didn’t know whether she would understand. He should have _told_ her when he had the chance— that Rush couldn’t block him, that if Telford managed to figure out what he was capable of doing from inside of Young’s head, he would pillage Rush’s thoughts without opposition. God. It would be carnage. Just thinking about it, Young felt sick. He had never intentionally rifled through Rush’s mind, and Rush had still almost killed himself trying to keep him out. With Telford’s hard, determined focus—

“Keep Telford from _touching_ him,” he told TJ. “At all costs _._ _Whatever it takes_. Do you understand me?”

He was still pushing the grip of his gun into her palm.

She nodded, pale.

He pulled away. “Last time we talked, he was somewhere near the CI room. Go. Go _now_. Run.”

Greer, without being told, handed James his own weapon, and she followed TJ down the dim corridor, vanishing almost at once into the dark.

“Bridge, report,” Young snapped into his radio, heading the opposite direction. At least he could try to build their head start.

“We’ve got power failures all over the ship,” Brody said. He sounded panicked. “We’ve lost shields and weapons, FTL… we’re about to lose life support. Everything’s dead, and I can’t reach Rush!”

The single strip of emergency lighting flickered abruptly— then went out, leaving the hallway pitch black.

Young could hear himself breathing. He closed his eyes. He still couldn’t feel Rush; was that a good or a bad sign? He knew his time here was almost up. In his last seconds, he tried to block out what he wasn’t feeling, the whole floorboards half of his brain, in the hopes that Telford wouldn’t see it, wouldn’t know it was there, that it wouldn’t even occur to him to _think_ —

The world shuddered. There was no pain this time, but he found himself back suddenly back on Earth, looking at Carter and breaking off a sentence he didn’t remember starting. He flexed his wrists against the Velcro restraints.

“Colonel Young?” Carter asked.

“We’ve lost all power,” he said, trying to curb his vicious anger and the fear that he could not let himself feel. “We have no shields, no weapons, no _life support_. We are _sitting ducks_ , and whatever happens to us, it’s going to be _on you_. I hope that your little _experiment_ here is worth that.”

“That seems awfully convenient,” Woolsey remarked. “We do something you don’t like, and suddenly you lose life support? There’s no reason why the stones should have that effect. No. We’ve seen this maneuver before.”

The condescension in his voice sent Young skyrocketing to a new level of fury. He opened his mouth, ready to tear Woolsey a new one, but fortunately, Eli leapt in before he could.

“The ship is sentient,” Eli said, his voice rising. “It’s _panicking_. It doesn’t know what’s going on. You know this kind of thing happens with Ancient tech!”

Carter was still looking at Young. “There’s nothing wrong with the workaround,” she said quietly. “I saw the schematics myself. So why did we lock onto Rush’s imprint and get you instead?”

Young said nothing for a moment. He trusted her, was the thing; but he didn’t trust Woolsey, or the IOA. Telford clearly had them wrapped around his little finger. They’d let him keep his position with Icarus despite the fact that he’d been a Lucian Alliance mole, despite the fact that he’d _deserted_ the Destiny during what he thought was a crisis. There was nothing the man couldn’t get away with. If Young told Woolsey the truth about Rush and the Destiny, Telford would absolutely find out, and— well, Young would rather not deal with that situation.

“Eli’s telling the truth,” he said slowly, monitoring Carter’s reaction. “We recently discovered a sophisticated AI at the heart of the Destiny’s mainframe. It’s interacted extensively with Rush. They seem to have developed a… rapport. I have no doubt that it was able to prevent you from pulling Rush out. As for why you got me…” He shrugged, aware that Carter was watching him intently. “I had to interface with Rush when he used the control chair. Maybe that confused our neural patterns. I don’t know; I’m not a science guy.”

“No,” Carter said. But she was, and she had to be weighing what he was telling her against what she knew.

“I’m positive,” Young continued, “that you’re _never_ going to be able to pull Rush out. So if that’s the goal of this little operation, you might as well just shut it down now. Or, you know, keep trying and see what the AI does next time. I have no _idea_ how its mind works. Maybe it’ll vent the atmosphere from the ship.”

There was no way, he thought, that the AI would risk Rush’s life. But Carter had no way of knowing that. What she needed to know, and what he was broadly communicating, was the truth: that the consequences of trying to pull Rush out would be disastrous.

She bit her lip, looking uncertain.

“Send us back,” Young said, meeting her eyes. “Send us back before it’s too late.”

Carter glanced at her watch. “We’re almost due for a report.”

“We said we’d give them another five minutes,” Woolsey began sharply, but Carter was already reaching forwards for the terminal..

The man whom Eli had switched with gasped, twitching against his restraints.

“What’s the situation?” Carter asked him.

“Main power is down. The backups just failed. They’ve got no shields. No lights. It’s pitch black. Colonel Telford is convinced that Rush is behind this somehow. He’s locking himself in the infirmary with two of Young’s personnel.”

Young held his tongue. He doubted that _Rush_ had locked himself in the infirmary. He doubted that Rush was doing much of anything. TJ and James must have found him and barricaded themselves in there. At least that seemed to imply that Telford hadn’t gotten to Rush. Whatever had happened to the ship, they were still one step short of a worst case scenario.

“Rush could be staging this,” Woolsey snapped. “We have no way of confirming this is an actual crisis.”

Carter ignored him. “So you’re getting no data?” she asked.

“No.”

“What’s Colonel Telford doing?”

“He’s trying to break into the infirmary to talk to Rush.”

Carter made a noise of frustration. “God,” she muttered. “This is such a—“

“Send us back,” Young said again, insistently. “You know it’s the right thing to do. You’re putting the entire crew at risk. And for what?”

Woolsey shook his head. He still looked unconvinced. “Given Dr. Rush’s history of manipulating Earth-based science teams sent to Destiny, we have specific orders to confirm the veracity of any reported threats. We simply won’t allow that man to continue playing us for fools.”

Young had opened his mouth to respond when, unexpectedly, Wray spoke for the first time.

“That’s understandable. Unfortunately,” she said, voice steely in a way that was uniquely hers, in spite of the fact that the voice itself was not, “evidence of a threat to human life usually takes a form that I’m sure we’d prefer to avoid. Perhaps instead you could take them a _reminder.”_

Carter’s gaze shifted to her.

“Homeworld Command _owes_ Dr. Rush,” Wray said icily. “Something… unfortunate happened to him. Something that wasn’t his fault. The Air Force might find itself in an uncomfortable position should that incident come to light. Or, God forbid, an internal review panel be called to consider it.”

Young could see her fingernails tearing tiny crescents into the arms of her chair. If he hadn’t known her, he wouldn’t have known she was playing a hunch— betting that no one would call on her to provide more information, betting that Carter would know about Telford’s unnamed project at all, and that whatever had happened with Telford and Rush was fucked-up enough to wield that kind of power.

There was a long silence. The atmosphere in the room was tense.

“Let me make a call,” Carter said.

She left the room.

It took her almost ten minutes to return.

That was _too long_ , Young thought, acutely aware of every second passing. Every second in which, on Destiny, God-knew-what was going down; every second in which something might be happening to Rush— he had grown, he realized, so used to a general consciousness of Rush’s mental weather that simply to be without it triggered a low surge of anxiety in him.

Carter slammed the door on her way in, out of breath. “Okay,” she said. “We’re sending you back. You’re going to have to meet with Colonel Telford tomorrow for a debriefing, and Rush is going to have to cooperate with McKay and me for a feasibility assessment. Can you guarantee me that’s going to happen?”

“Yes,” Young said instantly. “Absolutely. As long as it happens on the Destiny, and I get your _word_ that you don’t try to pull us— _me_ — out again.”

“Done,” Carter said. She was already heading towards the communications terminal.

“Thank you,” Young said, trying to catch her eye. He meant it.

“Don’t,” Carter whispered, looking down at the stones. “Don’t thank me.”

* * *

Young stumbled in the dark, caught in an intense wave of vertigo, trying to make the lights and shadows around him add up to a room.

After a moment, he understood that he was standing in one of the Destiny’s hallways, holding a flashlight. He swept the long beam of light back and forth. Greer was beside him, looking grim. They were outside the infirmary. Rush was— nowhere in Young’s head.

He reached for his radio. “TJ? It’s me. Telford’s gone.”

“I’m going to need some confirmation,” she said levelly.

He tried to think of something that would convince her— something he would know that Telford wouldn’t. It seemed like there should be so many of those things.

“You had nightmares after the mission to PX3-975,” he said quietly, turning away so that Greer couldn’t hear. “The little girl that the Lucian Alliance tried to use as a bomb. You’d wake up insisting that she’d come through the gate.”

TJ had been incoherent, convinced that the girl was looking for her, that she had something important to tell her, and when she woke up enough she would curl up against his shoulder and cry big wracking sobs. The girl had been eight years old, and SG-9 had had to shoot her. She had died a short time later in TJ’s arms.

There was a long silence. After a moment, there was a shriek of metal. Someone was prying the doors apart. It took a good few minutes to get them wide enough that Young and Greer could enter.

James was on the other side. She looked at Young grimly. “Telford never got through,” she said. “We made sure.”

“Good work,” Young said. “You and Greer coordinate with Scott. Report back over the radio in twenty minutes.”

They nodded and set off, vanishing almost at once into the darkness.

Young entered the infirmary. He couldn't see TJ at first. She was being very quiet, which worried him. Finally, his flashlight beam caught the metal holes of her bootlaces. He raised it till he could see her. She was perched on top of one of the gurneys, washed-out in the white light and holding his black shape of his gun in her hand.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” he said.

She clicked on her own flashlight and set it on a table, letting the light spread sideways out into the room.

“Where is he?” Young asked. He was trying not to sound as urgent as he felt.

TJ said nothing for a moment.

“TJ, it really is me.”

“I know,” she said. “I can tell. I’ve always been able to tell.”

“I really need to—“

“He hurt his foot,” she said softly. “Again. That’s the second time. I asked him how, the first time, and he wouldn’t tell me. It was right before he fixed the FTL drive. I thought— well, it would be just like Rush to try to hurt you by hurting himself. Out of spite. But that’s not what happened, is it?”

Young shifted uncomfortably. “No,” he admitted.

“You told me not to let Telford near him. Not to let Telford _touch_ him. To protect him from Telford at all costs. And they have a whole— _thing_ going on, so it sort of made sense at the time. But it was because of you, wasn’t it? Because Telford was in your head. And he could do— what, exactly?”

Young shut his eyes. "Pretty much anything he wanted.”

“And Rush wouldn’t be able to stop him.”

“No.”

“Because he can’t stop _you._ ”

“No,” he said.

She stood abruptly, holding the gun to her left shoulder as though she’d forgotten that she had it in her hand. He could see that Rush was lying unconscious behind her on the gurney, only half-visible in the flashlight’s glow.

“You told me you could _block the link_.” TJ said loudly. “You told me you could _block it.”_

“I can,” Young said. “But he can’t.”

“So how are you any better than Telford?”

“I’m not,” he said, his temper flaring. “Is that what you want to hear? I fuck things up; I hurt him; this whole _thing_ is fucked up. So maybe I’m no better than Telford. But I’m _trying_ , TJ. I’m trying not to goddamn hurt him, when he’ll even— just— _let_ me do that; I’m trying to keep us all alive with him in control of the ship, and I know it seems like everything is just _really fucked-up_ now, but I’m _trying._ And I _really_ just— need to see him.”

She eyed him unreadably. “He must hate this,” she said at last.

“He does,” Young said. “He fights it all the time.”

After a long moment, she moved aside and gestured towards the gurney. “We found him like this,” she said curtly. “Unresponsive.”

“He’s with the ship,” Young said, moving forwards. “That’s where he goes.”

“The ship is dead,” TJ said, the words like a slap.

Young didn’t say anything to that. He was looking down at Rush, who might have been sleeping if he hadn’t seemed so unnaturally still. Even in sleep people moved— they twitched, their eyes flickered. There was just— nothing in Rush at all. He was _not there_ , on some important level.

Young laid a hand against Rush’s shoulder, a little hesitantly, but felt nothing. He touched the side of Rush’s neck, as though checking for a pulse; he stroked Rush’s hair back from his forehead, an odd and unreasonably tender gesture that he found himself performing on instinct, without any conscious plan. Finally he sat beside the gurney and clasped Rush’s limp hand between his own, pulling it close against his chest. He closed his eyes and dove into his mind, prying up any trace of floorboards, any remnant of a block that might separate them.

Nothing. Only a flat dark plane that didn’t even hint at depth. No geography, no weather, no pressure of _moreness._ He pushed against it frantically, as though he could _force_ it to be more.

Nothing.

He turned away from Rush, away from TJ, and strode over to the wall in three steps. He clenched his hand into a fist, letting himself feel the guilt. It crept like a nauseating poison through his veins.

“Colonel?” TJ said, uncertain, from behind him.

As though her voice were the catalyst he’d been waiting for, he smashed his fist into the wall with a satisfying crack.

It hurt like hell.

“Fuck,” he breathed, drawing shakily back.

There was a silence

“Feel better?” TJ asked.

“No,” he said roughly.

“Let me see your hand.”

“It’s fine.” He pressed his forehead to the wall, unwilling to turn and face her.

“Try again,” TJ murmured. “It’s Rush. He’s difficult.”

Young laughed at that, and then couldn’t stand that he’d laughed.

“He’s _very_ difficult,” she said with a weary kind of dryness.

“I know,” he whispered. “I know he is.”

* * *

Young tried for more than three hours to reach Rush. He could only imagine the rumors that had to be circulating regarding his visible absence from, well, everywhere. But he couldn’t bring himself to leave the infirmary. If he hadn’t needed to be near Rush to heighten the connection, he would still have felt— he didn’t know how he felt. Like he had to be there. Some part of him recalled, on a physical level, that sense of their last fragile bond snapping, like someone or something had cleaved them in half, and it had been—

He leaned forward, dropping his head onto his folded arms, trying to push the memory back.

His radio crackled. “Colonel Young, this is Eli.”

“Yeah, go ahead.”

“I was wondering if I could come talk to you. I had an idea, and it’s kind of a long shot, but— anyway, I head from Greer that the infirmary is kind of off-limits. Because of. Um. Yeah.”

“You’re clear to come down,” Young said tiredly. 

Eli arrived only minutes later. The very faint end of his flashlight beam announced he was there only a few seconds before he started to talk. “You know, it’s really creepy to walk around the ship when it’s pitch black. Am I the only one who’s noticed this? I’d give it a seven on the creepiness scale, but that’s only because— Oh. Hey. Um… are you holding Rush’s _hand?_ ”

“Give me a break, Eli,” Young said wearily. “I’m trying to separate him from the ship. This helps.”

“Right. It’s just kind of a weird visual. What with— everything. Or maybe not so— You know what, I’m going to shut up now.”

Young narrowed his eyes. “You seem to be in an awfully good mood for someone with about fourteen hours of air left.”

“Oh! Right.” Eli shifted gears. “So you might have noticed that even though we’re being relentlessly pursued by evil aliens who want to kill us and steal our ship, somehow we’ve been sitting here for hours and we’re, like— not dead.”

“Yeah,” Young said. “Amazingly, I did notice that.”

“So that’s because we’re not using any power. Not _any_. To anyone looking for us, we’re basically a chunk of rock. Which is a really good thing, if you think about it. Plus, not having any power turned out to be awesome in the sense that it got Telford off of Destiny and brought _you_ back.”

“What are you saying?” Young asked slowly.

“I’m saying, when you think about it, it seems less like Destiny freaked out because Rush got messed up when you were pulled away, and more like this is a plan for making sure that everything gets back to normal.”

“Except the part where we all die because there’s no life support,” Young said.

“Right. That part is not so awesome. But I think there might be a way to get it back. Nothing’s actually wrong with the ship; it’s just— got no power. If we could get even minimal power, we might get stuff back. Including Rush.”

“So how do we do that?”

“I was thinking we should give it a jump start.”

Young stared at him.

“You know. Like a car? Look, Destiny is basically a piece of equipment. When it’s turned off, it can’t turn itself back on. But if we give it some power, it might be able to take it from there.”

Young rubbed his forehead. “All right. I’ll buy into this. What do you need?”

“Just a laptop, fifteen minutes, and access to the neural interface chair. I promise,” he said hastily, seeing Young’s thunderous expression, “all I’m going to do is hook my laptop up and say ‘hello world.’”

“All right,” Young said skeptically. “Give it a shot.”

Eli turned to go. Then he stopped and hesitated. Without turning to look at Young, he said in an unusually small voice, 'He's going to be okay, right?"

“I don’t know,” Young said. He stared up at the ceiling, trying not to think about the question. “I really don’t.”

* * *

It took half an hour before Eli radioed in. “I’m hooked up,” he said, sounding nervous. “Give it a minute.”

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the emergency lighting flared. The sublight engines slowly ground into motion under the deck plates. The ship, like an suddenly-conscious beast, was beginning to stir. Young imagined he could feel it stretching and yawning.

He pushed himself out of the chair where he’d been sitting and leaned over Rush, laying his hands against the sides of his head, and touched their foreheads together, as though this would bring them closer in the way that counted. There was _something_ there; he could feel it: a very faint rustle, a stir of motion that perhaps he alone in the world could have identified as Rush. He breathed out a sound of relief and reached for it. But it was like a small animal that he somehow had to coax out of the dark. He couldn’t grab it; there was nothing to grab onto. It wasn’t that solid yet; it wasn’t that well-formed.

“Eli,” he said over the radio— softly, as though Rush could hear him, or that skittish little semi-creature that wasn’t quite Rush. “We need more power.”

“You realize I’m using a laptop battery to start a starship, right?” Eli sounded harried. “The backups are already on. We’ve got shields. I think we might even get FTL in a minute. If you want full power, well— you know what we need for that. That’s more your department than mine right now.”

“Right,” Young said, sitting back.

“Any change?” TJ asked, coming to stand beside him.

“He’s _there,”_ Young said, a note of frustration in his voice. “I should be able to reach him. But he’s just not— he’s not really there _yet_.”

TJ gave him a thoughtful, slightly sharp look. “He’s not a machine,” she said. “He’s a _person_ , and I can’t even imagine how to define what just happened to him. Being mentally connected to a starship that shuts down for hours? There’s no way we can know what to expect. Give him some time.”

“I know,” Young said, “but I need him _now_.” Then he revised: “ _We_ need him now. He needs to wake up and restore power. We don’t have any time to give him.”

TJ didn’t respond.

Young pressed his left hand to Rush’s forehead, searching for him. There was still that faint sense of presence, hazy, restive, and uneasy. He tried to focus his thoughts towards it. //FTL,// he projected. //At a minimum, we need FTL.//

The radio crackled. “The drive is spooling up!” Eli said. “We’re about to—“

They jumped.

Young was only vaguely aware of this, and he grew less aware of anything that came after. The bulk of his consciousness was not in the world. It was traveling down, down, as deep as he could take it, down into that strangely-geometried space with Rush. He was aware of the ship, now— a vast multiplicity of blackness that seemed to speak all at once in various tongues, chords and harmonics that he couldn’t make sense of. Somewhere out there, the better part of Rush was being those gradations of blackness, forming parts of those alien chords. It didn’t— _want_ to come back, Young thought, or it wasn’t sure that was what it wanted. That was why the little coalesced part of Rush crept so warily around the edges, ready at any moment to dart back into the forest of the ship.

//I’m here,// Young sent towards it. //You have to come back. We need you.//

He wondered what had happened to Rush when the SGC pulled him back. What had it felt like for Rush, who hadn’t known what was happening, who had known only that one moment Young was there and the next he was being torn away? Maybe that was something he’d wanted— he’d tried to make the same thing happen himself, after all. But to Young it hadn’t felt like that. Rush had fought so hard to keep Young with him. He hadn’t wanted to let go.

“You should have let go,” Young whispered aloud.

He tried to project reassurance at Rush. A sense that everything was safe now, that the threat was over.

A little more of Rush eased out of the dark.

//I fucked up,// Young said. //Please come back. You can yell at me. I won’t even give you hell for it. You can throw any kind of tantrum you like.// After a moment he added dryly, //Don’t make me regret saying that.//

Something out there seemed to warm to him. It still wasn’t really a _person_. It was loosening its grip on the ship in little bits. Or was it the ship that was loosening its grip? It was hard to tell. Young was used to a clear distinction: having to pry the ship off of Rush. Here the ambivalence made things tricky.

He tried to go in and shake the ship loose a little, pick off some of its little tendrils in their integration-spots. The thing that wasn’t yet Rush seemed unsure about that. At first it was very wary of Young. Then—

//It’s me,// Young projected gently. //Let me do this. I need you back with me, genius.//

Another moment of hesitation and— abruptly it transferred its allegiance to him, letting him see the outline of its whole constellation scattered within the galaxy of the ship. He moved through that space, gathering it up and sewing it together, coaxing the ship to give up each anxious part.

His sense of Rush grew stronger slowly, until it started to feel like _Rush_ , like there actually _was_ a Rush that Young was working with; and Rush was really working _with_ him, prying himself out of the circuits, crawling back towards his body and the human world.

Soon after that, Young was startled by the return of the overhead lighting. He opened his eyes, squinting against the glare, and saw that TJ was standing beside him.

She looked worried. She said, “You’ve been at this for more than five hours.”

It hadn’t seemed that long. There was no time in that place.

“Hello?” Eli’s voice came over the radio. “So, uh, you may have noticed we’re back to full power. How are things going down there?”

Feeling impossibly weary, Young grabbed the radio. “Not sure. I’ll let you know,” he said.

He stared at Rush, who looked no different. //Rush?// he tried.

There was a long pause: a moment of tense, prolonged hesitation.

Then

 

 

somethinghappenedinRush’shead.

 

          It

was

 

no no        this _denovod_

                                                            Something’s                     01101000 01100001 01110000 01110000 01100101 01101110 01101001 01101110 01100111 01110100 01101111 00100000 01101000 01101001 01101101 00100000 01100010 01110101 01110100

                                                                                 _ne potisset_

                {g3/4,g4} {a#3,a#4} {c#4,c#5} {e4,e5} {g#4,g#5} {a#4,a#5} {c#5,c#6} {e5,e6} {g5,g6}

                              and           the           very          veryhigh b6                               _NO_

        01110000 01101100 01100101 01100001 01110011 01100101 

 

the shields!                               He is

 _noiei_                                              the ship theship  
  
                                                                                                                                       he's

 _noiei ne permithest_                                          _QUAESSO_

  

                                                            or is it L’Isle Joyeuse in the Lydian mode 

 _Gloria. Gloria. Paveo._  
_(Scio, Nick.)_

  

          He does not                     A rhizome is a root structure it comes from the Greek but it is also

_Quod de entropiam opinomor? Itave aut neum?_

 

The smoke from a cigarette is laminar at the beginning but later succumbs to turbulence

  
                                                                                    c6/16 a&5 c b g b4 g5 b {c#,a,c#6} d# b5 d# f6 c# f hecan’t he CANNOT  
                           Complete Disorder Is Impossible                 
         
  
            Indeo  
                                  sweetheart  
_(scio scio scio sed nehil ne potissum)_

 

 _CUBI EST_                                                                    And he’s  
    Not  
  
                              There is a problem with the way he’s

  _neodconlugtre_

  
     If the sun begins to melt the wax on our wings we can always don our formalist parachute!  
                                                                                                                                                         And in California the sun is

But David does not like it when he says that

 

                                        so                               thisisnot

          Something

                                                                                                                                     is

  _(Te mithendos es Nick quaesso) Modote_ LET _modo_ LETGO _te mithe_ LET GO JUST _Te mithe MODO TE MITHE Nick_ but he would NOT

                    and

Young        had   to  rememberthat he   was  Young andnot    Rush      which  was  extraordinarily     difficultwhen   Rush        did  not    remember  that    hewasRush and   instead was   justreally   PANICKING and        _em   caputei dolhet_ which    is to say his head hurtsomuch but   to    have  a head      that  hurt you had to

(a) have a body and  
(b) be a person who could hurt so he was relatively sure he was a person and Young was a person and they were both persons which was to say they were two separate persons and

Young realized the overhead lights had flared to an almost intolerable brightness, not un-akin to flying through a sun. Beside him, TJ had her eyes covered.

He was definitely Young. He was not that stream of unintelligible fragments. God, he hoped there was something more than that left.

“Rush,” he managed to get out. “Rush— “

He didn’t know if Rush could understand him. But after a moment the lights dimmed.

Rush’s eyes flickered open. He gazed blankly at Young. “… _Cubi essom?_ ” he asked weakly. “ _Quod adcadevad? Me caputei dolhet.”_

Young looked at TJ, not sure what to do or say.

“Dr. Rush,” she said. “Can you understand us? Can you understand what we’re saying?”

Rush stared at them with an expression of exhausted incredulity.

“English, Rush,” Young said, squeezing his hand gently. “English. Get with the program.”

“Fuck you,” Rush said, with a slightly strange accent.

“That’s more like it. How about a sentence?” Young asked.

“‘Fuck you’ _is_ a sentence.”

Young grinned at him helplessly. He felt such a wave of relief that he was giddy with it. There was so much of it that he pushed some of it towards Rush, hoping to communicate it to him.

“What… happened?” Rush asked, his diction a little less crisp than usual. He seemed confused. “And—“ He looked down. “Why are you holding my hand?”

“You scared the shit out of us, is what happened,” Young said. “You shut down the ship to protect us.” He didn’t make any move to let Rush’s hand go, and Rush didn’t remove it. In fact, he absently laced his fingers through Young’s.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He frowned, his eyes going distant. “The last thing I remember— you were on the floor. I was trying to—“ He made a listless gesture with his free hand. He didn’t seem able to explain what he meant, or was simply too tired.

Young looked at TJ. “Could you give us a minute?” he asked her.

She hesitated. He remembered their recent argument. But she said only, “Call me if you need anything. _Either_ of you.”

When she had gone, Young turned back to Rush. “So,” he said, looking down to where their hands were entangled. “You’re not going to like this.”

“I already don’t like it,” Rush murmured. His eyes had closed again.

“Homeworld Command has been designing a modification to the communication terminal that would allow them to pull people out against their will. Their whole plan from day one was to use it on you.”

Rush turned his head fractionally to gaze at Young. “You knew about this.”

His weather both looked and felt bruised. Betrayed, maybe.

“Yes,” Young said quietly.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought you would destroy the terminal,” Young said. It was the truth.

“I might have done.” Rush shrugged, the barest flinch of his shoulders. “But I could have told you that they wouldn’t be able to pull me out. We could have _done_ something to prevent this.”

“I know,” Young said. He was finding it difficult to speak. He swallowed. “That’s why— I was going to tell you. That was what I wanted to talk about this morning. I wanted us to work together.”

Rush sighed. “So what happened?”

“Telford switched with me. I was gone for about twenty minutes. The ship lost power— we dropped out of FTL, and critical systems started to shut down. You were out the whole time. Carter pulled the SGC team back.”

“Twenty minutes?” Rush asked tiredly. “This could have been much worse, you realize.”

“Yeah,” Young said heavily. “But also— that twenty minutes was this morning. You’ve been unconscious for eleven hours. We just got full power back a few minutes ago. Eli thought maybe you planned it, that you cut power on purpose.”

Rush made a noncommittal noise. His eyes were drifting closed. “I don’t know. It’s possible.”

“Hey,” Young said, rubbing his thumb slowly over the back of Rush’s hand. “I know you’re tired, but stay with me for a minute.”

Rush blinked at him.

“I’m— I didn’t want this to happen. I fucked up.” Young paused. “I said that to you when you were out, too. So I guess I’m saying it twice.”

“You should have told me,” Rush said, sounding defeated. “Telford was the one who pushed for this, wasn’t he?”

“Yes,” Young said quietly.

“Of course. Of course he was.”

“What’s the deal with you two?”

Rush looked down and said nothing. His hand had tightened slightly against Young's hand.

“… I guess I should let you rest,” Young said at last, trying not to betray how much he wanted an answer to the question. “Anyway, I’m _way_ past overdue on the bridge.”

“You’ve been down here the whole time?” Rush said, sounding surprised. “Why?”

Young looked away, slightly uncomfortable. “You were our best chance for restoring main power. Plus—“ He shrugged, one-shouldered. “I don’t know. I didn’t want— I wanted to— fix this.”

It was a pretty terrible explanation. But Rush just looked at him for a moment, his weather cycling very rapidly through a range of sounds and colors Young couldn’t understand.

Young squeezed his hand once more and stood to leave.

He’d only taken a few steps when he felt the headache they were having between them intensify. The room seemed to lurch sideways.

Young turned back to look at Rush. Rush hadn’t moved. His eyes were closed. “Rush?” he asked.

“It’s nothing. It’ll pass.”

“Are you sure?” Young watched him uncertainly.

“Relatively.”

“Really?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Go.”

Young rolled his eyes and turned, though it made his sense of vertigo strengthen.

He stopped by TJ’s office on his way out, partly because he wanted to touch base with her, and partly because he wasn’t sure he could make it all the way across the infirmary floor. God, his headache was _incredible_. _Their_ headache. Whatever.

“How is he?” TJ asked, when she saw him leaning against the doorframe.

“Well, he’s hanging in there. Pretty unbelievably.”He was having a hard time focusing on her. The room was distorting around him. It was like having the world’s absolute worst case of the spins, like he was drunk and hungover all at once.

“...You don’t look so good either,” TJ said uncertainly.

“It’s nothing,” he started to say, just as his knees buckled. She barely managed to make it around her desk in time. They folded to the cold metal of the deck plating.

“Who is it?” she asked sharply. “You or him?”

“Both,” he choked out, because he could _tell_ , he just _knew_ it; on the other side of the infirmary, Rush was curled in on himself—

TJ grabbed his face, checking his pupils. “Can you get up?” she asked.

He couldn’t answer.

“ _Can you get up?”_

“Yeah,” he slurred, but he could only managed to do it by leaning heavily on TJ. She had to drag him back towards Rush, and he came awfully close to throwing up on her at several intervals. It was a good thing, he thought woozily, that the romance was literally gone.

She managed to get him into the chair he’d vacated earlier. He reached out blindly, groping clumsily for Rush’s hand. They found each other, gasping in tandem as the skin-to-skin contact made the worst of the vertigo ease. The brutal edge of the headache softened a moment after, to where what was hammering them felt more like a hard stone than an axe.

After a few minutes, Young opened his eyes.

Rush was staring at him with a pained and hostile expression.

“You said you were _sure_ ,” Young snapped.

“I said _relatively_ sure.”

TJ looked bewildered. “What just happened?” she asked.

“I think we might have screwed something up,” Young said. “Apparently, we can’t separate.”

“I fucking despise you at times,” Rush shot at him. “You know that, correct?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "If the sun begins to melt the wax on our wings..." is a quote from Akihiro Kanamori and Menachem Magidor's "The evolution of large cardinal axioms in set theory."
> 
> "Complete disorder is impossible" comes from Theodore Motzkin's "Cooperative classes of finite sets in one and more dimensions."
> 
> The first musical section is from the Mendelssohn violin concerto; the second is from Debussy's "L'Isle Joyeuse."
> 
> "L'Isle Joyeuse in the Lydian mode" refers to cleanwhiteroom's "Mathematique."
> 
> "Quod de entropiam opinomor? Itave aut neum?" = "What do we think about entropy? Yes or no?"
> 
> "noiei ne permithest" = "I won't let this happen"
> 
> "Te mithendos es" = "You have to let go"
> 
> "Quaesso" = "Please"
> 
> "Indeo" = "I need"
> 
> "Scio sed nehil ne potissum" = "I know, but there's nothing I can do"
> 
> "Neod conlugtre" = "Don't fight this"
> 
> "Cubi essom? Quod adcadevad? Me caputei dolhet." = "Where am I? What happened? My head hurts."
> 
> &c.


	11. Chapter 11

Young dreamed that he was back in Colorado, at the Bill’s Liquor Mart about a mile from the Mountain where he’d met Sheppard for the first time. He’d stopped in right before midnight after an offworld mission, and he’d been gatelagged like hell from the weird juxtaposition of noon and night— he’d left PX5-O37 at what felt like ten in the morning, spent three hours in debriefing, and then walked out to find the sky dark. So things were already weird. He’d just wanted to pick up a six pack and head home to where he knew that Emily wouldn’t be waiting up. But there was Sheppard, sort of slouching against the counter and giving the store guy a big smile, trying to charm his way out of not having any money on him.

“Hey,” Young had said, because he’d seen Sheppard around, and Sheppard had turned and looked at him and said, “Hey.”

“I got you,” Young had said, and he’d paid for Sheppard’s— holy shit— three bottles of whiskey and case of shitty beer. “You having a party or something?” he’d joked. Sheppard had lowered his eyes and smiled a much smaller, quiet smile, which Young didn’t know yet was never a sign of something good.

“You know me,” Sheppard had said, and Young had said, “I don’t, actually,” and Sheppard had tilted his head and given Young a considering look and said, “No.”

So anyway, one way and another, for reasons he didn’t quite fathom, Young didn’t end up going home. He went to Sheppard’s weird pristine apartment instead, and they sat out on the prefab white-picket-railing-style balcony and killed about half the case of beer.

“I always forget my fucking wallet,” Sheppard had said. “I’m still not used to carrying it.”

Young had glanced back into the apartment. It had immaculate sea-green carpet and a set of furniture that he was pretty sure had come straight out of a show-room window. “You forget to carry the rest of your fucking life back from Atlantis?”

Sheppard had smiled that same smile, little and secret, like he was laughing at a joke that Young wouldn’t get. “Mm,” he’d said, a sort of noncommittal sound of agreement, and stretched out, resting his feet against the balcony railing. At some point in their little drinking session, he’d lost his shoes. It was warm enough that time of year to go without them, even in the early hours of the morning, when Colorado could turn cold. But Young felt thrown stupidly off-balance by the sight of Sheppard’s bare feet. For some reason it was like seeing him without his shirt on.

He turned away hastily and, for lack of anything better to look at, found himself looking up at the sky. That was what Sheppard was looking at too. It was a like a basic human instinct, looking upwards. They just sat there and stared at the thin spread of stars that was all you could see from the balcony of a too-new apartment complex overlooking a parking lot in a Colorado Springs.

“The rest of my fucking life,” Sheppard said softly.

Later they’d gotten drunker and Sheppard had tried to explain some theory about wormholes, and Young had listened carefully, not understanding any of it, and Sheppard had said, “You’re kind of a surprisingly thoughtful guy,” and Young had tried to explain that he wasn’t really, he was just quiet; he’d always been too quiet for his own good— that in fact they’d held him back a grade in elementary school because they thought he was slow since he was quiet, and he used to get in trouble for hitting the other kids when they picked on him. “But you weren’t slow,” Sheppard said. “Maybe you just hadn’t figured out what you wanted to say yet. Or found the right person to say it to.” “Yeah? And who’s that?” Young had said, and Sheppard had looked at him for a long time before his smile kind of dipped, and he’d said, “I guess you’ll know when you know.” Things got hazy after that, but Young had slept on a couch that he suspected no one had ever sat on, and he remembered wondering before he fell asleep what Sheppard’s bedroom looked like, if it had the same kind of furniture store aesthetic, or if there was something, anything in it that looked like _him_ , because already he sensed that there was _someone_ inside Sheppard, and had made the fatal mistake of wanting to know who it was.

In his dream, the narrative was different. _He goes into the liquor mart, and Sheppard is still there with no money, and Young still says, “I got you.” But then he realizes that Sheppard’s not buying liquor; that what’s sitting on the counter, waiting for the clerk to stick it in a bag, is a human heart. “You don’t mind, do you?” Sheppard says, looking at Young from under his eyelashes with that little self-deprecating smile. “I forgot to carry mine back from Atlantis.” But it’s not some cartoon kind of heart; it’s— blood and muscle and arteries and parts that look like gristle, all meat-like, and Young is nauseated._

 _It occurs to him that maybe this isn’t Sheppard. That maybe it’s actually the AI. He doesn’t know how he’d know for sure. And he doesn’t want the AI in his dreams; he doesn’t want it_ near _him. So strong is his urge to get away that he stumbles backwards out of the store, out into what should be a parking lot in Colorado, with june bugs clicking and fluttering around the fluorescent lights, but instead he’s in a large posterboard-colored room that looks like a backstage. There’s a battered piano in a corner, and the smell of dust and strings and coffee, and racks of scraped-up upside-down music stands._

 _And_ Rush _is there, looking harried and looking— well, more human, in his wire-rimmed glasses and a button-down white shirt. He’s kneeling, trying to sort through what must be hundreds of pages of sheet music someone has knocked down or spilled or dumped out on the floor. He keeps picking sheets of music up, glancing at them, and then discarding them over his shoulder. He has a hopeless expression.“I can’t find it,” he says._

_“What?” Young asks._

_“The—“ He hesitates, and presses the heels of his hands against his forehead. “I don’t remember,” he says sounding panicked. “Why can I not remember? I was supposed to know; I was supposed to know it by now!”_

_“Okay,” Young says soothingly. He’s pretty good, by this point, at curbing Rush’s more violent moods, at least when he’s got nothing on the line. “Maybe I can help you look. It’s a piece of music?”_

_“Obviously!” Rush shouts at him. “What else would I be performing?”_

_Even in dreams Young can’t do anything right, apparently._

_“And you’re sure it’s part of this whole mess?” With the toe of his boot, Young nudges at a splayed-out sheet of music._

_“It was supposed to be in boxes,” Rush says. He turns away, fretful. “It was all supposed to be in boxes.” Then, looking up sharply, he frowns at Young. “_ You _were supposed to be in a box! Why won’t you_ stay _where I_ put you? _”_

_“Sorry,” Young says, taken aback. “I didn’t know.”_

_“You can’t_ be _here.” Rush is getting agitated._

 _“But I don’t want to miss the performance,” Young says— because it’s suddenly obvious to him, in the way that things in dreams are obvious, that in fact he_ doesn’t _want to miss it. He really, really wants to stick around and hear Rush play._

 _“No,” Rush says, and climbs to his feet, shoving Young backwards. “You have to go. Get out of here_. _”_

_“Then why does David get to stay?” Young points to the corner, where Telford is lounging on a sagging blue sofa, casually flipping through classified mission reports._

_Rush’s face cracks. For a second he looks utterly desolate. “It’s too late. I can’t get rid of him now.”_

_“It’s not too late,” Young says, and he doesn’t think he’s talking about Telford, though he doesn’t know what else he’d be talking about. He has a strange sense of being himself and not-himself at the same time, as though he’s not in control of what he does in this dream. He takes Rush’s hand and laces their fingers together.“Nick,” he says. “It’s not too late.”_

_He’s in and not in the dream then, like it’s pulling away from him, like it’s being reeling back to somewhere very far away, and he’s in the room with Rush and he’s in a parking lot in Colorado and he sees the anguish in Rush’s face as Rush tries to hold onto his hand, and the store is closing and june bugs are clicking at the lights because they’re dumb-as-dirt creatures who don’t know any better; they think there’s something other than incineration waiting for them at the heart of the sun—_

He woke with a start on an infirmary gurney, still in his rumpled uniform and half-draped over Rush.

He vaguely remembered having helped TJ push two gurneys together the night before, so he could get out from under the cloud of his damn headache and rest, but at some point he must have relocated without waking himself up. Rush was still asleep, and when Young tried to untangle himself from the blankets covering them, he stirred and made an anxious noise.

//Shh,// Young said, and projected a quiet wave of reassurance.

He hoped TJ hadn’t seen them sleeping like that. He didn’t want to her to get the wrong idea. God; he was glad _Rush_ had slept through it.

He stood, and as he did so he could feel the headache begin again. It was maybe a little better than last night. At least the walls weren’t spinning. He still reached behind him to clutch for Rush’s hand, hoping that Rush wouldn’t wake up. Something stirred in him, a half-remembered dream.

He tried to remember what he’d dreamed, frowning as he inspected his other hand. His fingers were bruised and swelling at the knuckles where he’d hit the wall. Yesterday had just been a parade of good decisions all around. He was lucky that Rush hadn’t picked up on that, either. He’d never let Young hear the end of it.

Around the corner, the main doors of the infirmary swished open. He looked up, and heard TJ’s voice. “Camile. What can I do for you?

“I need to speak to Colonel Young,” Wray replied.

“He’s asleep,” TJ said, her voice guarded. “He’s exhausted.”

Wray paused. “Then I need to speak to Dr. Rush.”

“I’m sorry,” TJ said smoothly. “That’s not possible right now.”

Young could practically see Wray staring TJ down. Her voice had acquired a dangerous quality. “What’s going on, TJ?”

Before the situation could deteriorate any further, Young reached for his radio. “TJ,” he said in a low voice. “It’s fine. I’m awake. Let her come back.”

He was still leaning against Rush’s gurney when Wray rounded the corner, though he could just about get away with not touching Rush.

Wray raised her eyebrows at something— probably his disheveled appearance, though it could have been a number of eyebrow-raising things. She opened her mouth to speak, but he shook his head.

“Quiet,” he whispered. “Don’t wake him up.”

Wray looked at Rush, who had turned slightly towards Young in his sleep, like he was some sort of light-seeking plant and Young was the sun. He was pale, his eyes carrying bruised hemispheres, almost as though he’d been hit in the face.

“He looks terrible,” Wray said.

Young couldn’t dispute it. He said, “He’s had a rough week.”

“What _happened_ yesterday, Everett?” She kept her tone and face neutral.

“You were there,” he said, stalling for time.

“You know what I mean.”

Not only did he know what she meant, but he knew her. She wasn’t going to be leaving without an answer to the question. He should have told her from the beginning, probably. And she’d put a lot on the line to get him out of that mess, without even knowing what she was doing it for.

He sighed. “Rush has a psychic link with the ship.”

“A _what?”_

“And,” he plowed on, undeterred, “with me.”

She stared at him

He shrugged.

“With _you?_ ”

“It’s… complicated.”

“I can imagine,” she said tartly.

“Apparently, it’s the way the ship is meant to work. One human navigator, or whatever, and someone else to make sure they’re okay.”

“You,” Wray said, disbelieving. “Your job is to _take care of Rush?_ ”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I know how it sounds.”

She shook her head. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. She paced several steps away from him, then paced back. Her heels were making quick little clicking sounds on the deck plates.

“Who knows about this?” she said at last.

“TJ. Greer. Eli.”

“You’re going to have to tell the crew _something._ The two of you have been missing in action for twenty-four hours. The ship shut down. No one knows what’s going on. Not that we ever know what’s going on, _apparently_ , but people have the right to know something.”

“I know,” Young said heavily. “I know they do. I just don’t know what to tell them.”

“Well, I’d suggest _not_ telling them that the survival of the ship now rests on the cooperation of the two people on board most likely to—“ She stopped, restraining herself. She closed her eyes and put a hand to her head. “I would suggest not revealing the nature of your connection,” she said more carefully. “Explain Rush’s relationship with the ship, and attribute to the incident yesterday to Colonel Telford. I assume that’s one area in which you and Rush agree?”

“Yes,” Young said.

Their eyes met. He could tell they were both remembering their previous conversation. Without speaking, they turned in tandem to look at Rush. He hadn’t moved.His eyebrows were drawn slightly together, as though he were fighting off a headache in his sleep.

“Have you talked to him?” Wray asked after a moment. “Is he going to be all right?”

Young fought the urge to reach out and take Rush’s hand. “He doesn’t remember what happened. He never remembers anything from when he’s with the ship. TJ says—“ he tried to remember. “His neural architecture can’t support the amount of data required for those memories. Which makes him sound like a machine. But he’s not.”

“No,” Wray said quietly.

There was another long pause.

“I think you should both talk to the crew,” she said. “I can organize town hall meetings, like we did a few years ago. That way it’s not as… stressful.” She glanced over at Rush again. “Will he be able to do that?”

“I think so,” Young said, although he didn’t know. “Maybe don’t schedule anything before twelve hundred hours.”

She nodded. “I’ll try to work around your meeting with Colonel Telford.”

It was a pointed reminder. Young worked not to visibly wince. He was pretty sure she picked up on it anyway, but he was also pretty sure that she sympathized. “Right,” he said. “I haven’t forgotten. I’ll take care of it.”

When she had gone, he sank back into the chair by Rush’s gurney, absently letting his hand rest on Rush’s sleeping arm. He hadn’t even thought yet about how to deal with Telford. He wasn’t about to let Telford anywhere near Rush, which was going to necessitate some tricky arrangements, since he and Rush couldn’t be apart.

The presence of Wray and the reminder of what she’d told him had gotten him wondering again about Telford’s history with Rush. He needed to know, he thought, if he was going to go twelve rounds with Telford. Telford wasn’t going to stop coming for the ship. And even _Wray_ had known more than Young did, which left him feeling distinctly outgunned. Because knowledge— that was the only real weapon, the really lethal weapon in Telford’s world.

He tried to remember what he’d seen in Rush’s dream, or in his dream-fragments. Rush and Telford had definitely been offworld, in some kind of lab. It had been Ancient, but not Ancient— Young’s had thought it was Goa’uld. There _had_ been a Goa’uld who had worked with Ancient tech— Anubis, the guy whose clone had nearly destroyed Cheyenne Mountain. Young had known someone sent to clean up one of his research labs. Usually “clean up” meant destroy, but that time a lot of the tech had been taken. No one had really asked what for. It was plausible, Young guessed, that Telford could have gotten ahold of it to study, and that he could have found a working lab offworld. But Anubis’s aim had been _ascension_ , and Telford’s project was somehow related to Icarus, which had turned out to be about the Destiny. What was the link?

The Ancients, of course. The Ancients had ascended. They had built the Destiny. They had… they had designed the interface chair. 

Young looked at Rush, who— as though he sensed the troubled coil of Young’s thoughts— made an unhappy expression and shifted closer to Young.

Rush had wanted to use the chair, but he’d always refused to. When he’d had to, he’d used a firewall of some kind. The first time he’d had to forgo the firewall, in the middle of a battle, when he hadn’t had the option— something had happened. The ship had started opening doors for him. As though it  _knew_ him, as though it had made a  _deal_ with him.

Young shivered.

“You knew,” he whispered. “You knew what would happen.”

What had Telford done to him in that lab? And why hadn’t Rush _told_ him?

The last was easily answered. Young sighed and reached out to tug the blanket up over Rush’s shoulders.

“I wish you trusted me,” he murmured. “Just a little bit.”

* * *

Rush finally woke an hour later and, as was typical, absolutely crashed back into consciousness, his mind flooding with static and color and noise and a need to _move, move faster, get out of here, go_. Young put a hand on his shoulder, holding him back, not wanting him to either fall off the gurney or make a really ill-advised break for the door, but that was a bad idea: Rush tensed, his weather shrieking into a maelstrom at the sensation of being held down.

Young lifted his hands up. “Hey. It’s okay. It’s just me.”

Rush blinked at him. “…Yes,” he said groggily. “I can see that.” He touched his throat gingerly; he was sounding hoarse.

“You need water,” Young said, and handed him the plastic cup that TJ had left on the bedside table.. “TJ said if you don’t drink at least a liter you’re getting an IV.”

Rush shot him a look of disdain that suggested he dared anyone to try to put an IV in him. The look turned to distrust when he tasted what was in the cup. “This is _not_ water.”

“TJ put some stuff in it. Salt, probably? I don’t know. Just drink it.”

Rush narrowed his eyes.

“I’m not trying to poison you, Rush. It’s budget Gatorade. _God.”_

Rush drank sullenly. He was clearly _not_ in a good mood. Young didn’t know what exactly that was about, but he took it as a positive sign, since it indicated that Rush was feeling more like his usual self.

“What are you so fucking happy about, anyway?” Rush said shortly. “This is terrible.” He made a curt gesture between their heads, by which Young gathered he meant their inability to separate, rather than the salted water— though that was probably also terrible. “How am I supposed to get anything done? Presumably you have things to do as well, though what exactly those things might be remains unclear.”

“It’s not going to be a problem,” Young said, trying to keep his tone easy and his mood light. “Trust me. At least for today.”

“If you think that I’m spending all _day_ in here—“

“No,” Young said quickly. “Listen, Wray and I talked, and she’s setting up some town hall meetings so you and I can talk with the crew. Right now no one knows why the ship shut down, or what happened to you and me, and she thought it would give us a chance to explain—“

He paused at Rush’s increasingly stormy expression, but decided to forge ahead.

“—Explain about you and—“

Rush’s gaze looked like it might successfully melt lead.

“—Explain that you and the ship are linked. I thought—“

“Yes,” Rush said. “Precisely. You. _You_ thought. You didn’t even fucking wait till I was fucking conscious to plan our fucking day. Well, I’ve got news for you. First of all, I don’t know what a _town hall meeting_ is, and I don’t want to know. Second, I’m not doing it, and certainly not multiple times in a row. Third, and most importantly, there are far more pressing concerns at this point— specifically, evaluating the platform and the neural network that define Destiny’s AI.”

“Okay,” Young said, aware that his congeniality was fraying, “but you can put Eli on that for now, and—“

Rush leveled a finger at him. “ _You_ do not make scientific decisions about this ship!”

“Can you please not freak out about this?” Young said, laying a pacifying hand on Rush’s arm.

That, too, turned out to be the wrong move. Rush jerked violently away, his mind awash in screeching fragments of staticky emotions and uneasy memories. “Don’t _touch_ me,” he snapped.

Young clenched his jaw. “You are— a _lot_ of work.”

Rush hurled his empty plastic cup at the wall. “What the fuck is wrong with you? _Town hall meetings? A lot of work?_ Do you have a background in middle management? Did you get traumatized at one of Dr. Jackson’s cultural sensitivity seminars? Don’t tell me I’m _a lot of work_ ; tell me what you actually mean!” 

“I am trying to _help_ you,” Young exploded, finally and spectacularly losing his temper. “Look, I know that for whatever reasons of deeply-ingrained psychological fucked-up-ness, you’re physically incapable of recognizing that fact, but _I_ am trying to help _you!_ And frankly it would go a lot fucking smoother if you could stop lying for just _one second_ , or _hiding shit_ , or everything else you do for no goddamn reason except to—“

“ _You_ withheld information from _me_ about Colonel Telford’s plan to use the communication stones to—“

“I already _told_ you I was going to _tell_ you that—!”

“Which I’m sure made you feel much better about yourself, but did fuck-all for me, so—”

“You have got to be kidding me!” Young stood abruptly and paced as far away from Rush as he could get, which turned out to be about a whole two feet. The _nerve_ of Rush to pit _one_ decision against the no-doubt _dozens_ of secrets he was _still_ keeping— and now Rush had gotten Young thinking about Telford, too, the goddamn mess that was Telford, which only increased Young’s fury. It didn’t occur to him that his thoughts were loud, and that he hadn’t broken the news to Rush about the meeting. He could tell the exact moment when Rush picked it out of his brain.

Rush’s eyes widened and his mind _screeched_ into multiple streams of fast, chaotic, fractured thinking. “You agreed to _bring him here?_ ”

Here and there, flickering in amongst the jerky, nauseous landscape that Rush had made out of his head, was that lab, with its dark gilt-work walls, and its glowing circuitry, and the smell of something burning, and David’s hand against his cheek—

Young lost sight of the memory as it vanished, buried beneath static and uninterpretable images of snow. “I agreed to bring him here so I could get back and save all of our lives!” he said loudly. “Goddamnit, Rush, I was not _hiding_ this from you; you’ve been unconscious for most of the last twenty-four hours!”

“And whose fault was that?” Rush threw at him. But he was off-kilter now. The news about Telford had derailed him. He was less angry than he was upset.

“Mine,” Young said tightly. “It was my fault. There. Are you happy?”

Rush clearly wasn’t. He pulled his knees to his chest and curled forwards, a picture of misery. Young couldn’t read any of his thoughts— only his roiling, seasick weather. It was hard to look at it.

Young sighed. He turned away for a second and rubbed at his forehead. “Look—“ he said. “If we have to put off talking to the crew, Wray will work it out for us. I’ll go with you to do whatever you have to do. I didn’t mean to make it seem like you don’t get a say.”

Rush relaxed fractionally at that, though his head stayed buried in his arms where they were folded on top of his knees.

Very cautiously, Young reached out and laid a hand on his back. //?// he projected uncertainly, asking for permission.

He felt a tiny shrug. Rush sent back a wan sense of assent.

Their minds came slowly into apposition, a careful and comforting intimacy that did away with any trace of their incipient headache. Young let his hand move just a little, stroking Rush’s back in the same way he would have stroked the side of a spooked horse as a kid. Rush didn’t protest. His tension slowly eased further.

//—Sorry,// Rush sent, his thoughts abruptly coalescing to form the word, before dissolving once more in their unreadable patterns.

//You’re having a bad week,// Young said.

//I’m having a bad decade,// Rush said.

//Yeah. I’m getting that.//

//I can’t talk to Telford. Not today.//

//No. I have an idea about that, though.// Young sent a brief visual explanation of his plan.

Rush nodded. //What time are the meetings supposed to be happening?//

//Don’t worry about it. Whenever.//

//I can do some of the necessary coding to interrogate the AI via laptop.//

//Sure,// Young said easily. //That would be great.//

There was a long pause. Young was aware of his hand on Rush’s back, slowly smoothing between his shoulder blades; the heartbeat he could feel, the heat of Rush’s skin.

After a while Rush finally lifted his head and looked at Young. His expression was unreadable.

Young felt caught by his gaze. “Hi,” he said quietly, and then didn’t know why he’d said it.

Rush smiled very faintly. “Hi,” he said.

Young cleared his throat and stepped back, eager to break the odd intensity of the moment. He fumbled on the table beside him for a power bar that TJ had left. “You’re, um, supposed to eat this, by the way. Doctor’s orders. It’s one of TJ’s very last power bars.”

It wasn’t one of the standard SGC-issue energy bars that came with the MREs. It was an honest-to-God grocery store concoction that came half-coated in waxy chocolate, glossy with some kind of sweet syrup and studded with nuts. Rush looked at it for a moment when he’d unwrapped it, then broke off a piece and handed it to Young.

“Nope,” Young said. “You need the calories more than anyone.”

“I’m trying to have a moment, and you’re ruining it.”

That surprised a smile out of Young. He shrugged and accepted, biting down on crunchy, synthesized beads that tasted vaguely like oats and almonds and heartbreakingly familiar, safe, chemical Earth preservatives. When he hit the chocolate, it was brittle and so fucking sweet it hurt.

“Oh, my God,” he said, closing his eyes.

“That,” Rush said dryly, “was obscene.”

“Come on. You can’t tell me you don’t miss chocolate.”

“I save my oral fixations for things that deserve them.”

“Such as?” Young challenged.

Rush shut his eyes. “Cigarettes.”

Young wrinkled his nose. “Those things’ll kill you.”

Rush’s mouth curved, not quite in a smile, as he looked down for an instant. His mind was opaque. “The best things always do.”

In the back of his mind, the Destiny seemed to awaken for an instant, stirring and stretching forwards eagerly, a living and convoluted darkness that Young could not understand, only hold back as it licked at the edges of Rush’s consciousness. In the next instant it was gone, but Young, looking at Rush, was left with a sudden sense of dread.

Rush tilted his head and frowned. //?//

“Nothing,” Young said. “Just— nothing.”

“Good. Because,” Rush said with a burst of energy, grabbing one of his crutches and using it to snag his boots off the floor, “I’m going to need someone to carry my computer when we find it. And as you seem to have no end of free time on your hands…”

Young sighed.

* * *

Wray had scheduled the first town hall meeting to start at twelve hundred hours. By the time they’d located Rush’s computer, they were running late, and they showed up to the mess to find Wray sitting silently in front of a third of the Destiny’s crew. What little conversation there had been died abruptly as they entered the room. The walk from the doorway to where Wray was seated seemed to last forever. Even Rush, who normally thrived on hostile scrutiny, seemed uncomfortable. He didn’t like, Young could pick up vaguely, so many people _looking_ at him.

“Hey,” Eli said as they passed him. “Nice to see you’re alive. A radio call would have been cool, by the way. Just, you know, ‘Hey, Eli, thanks for saving the day. Again.’”

“Eli,” Rush snapped— almost reflexively.

Someone in the crowd snickered, probably because that kind of response from Rush had become a running joke. Then someone else laughed, and the silence broke, with whispered conversation bursting out in patches.

Rush turned toward Wray’s table and added, without looking at Eli, “No less than I expected.”

“You’re welcome,” Eli said mildly. “Anytime. Just feel free to go on implementing insane-sounding, barely comprehensible plans, and then telling me to fix the consequences. It’s really fun for me.”

Young rolled his eyes and settled himself beside Wray at the table she’d chosen. Rush, predictably, sat as far away from Young as he could get— which was just about at the end of the table. He opened his computer as soon as Young slid it over to him and commenced ignoring the room at large.

Wray gave him a long, incredulous look, and then turned her gaze on Young. He shrugged helplessly, and tried a conciliatory smile.

She swallowed a sigh and began her explanation. It didn’t take long to sell the basics to the crew, and they didn’t seem as alarmed as Young had feared they’d be. Maybe they were just burnt out on alarm. If Rush was in charge of the ship, at least _someone_ was in charge of the ship. Probably it helped that Young and Wray were acting like they didn’t have a problem with it. _Acting_ , of course, was the right word.

After the meeting, Eli approached Rush with a look of wry exhaustion. “Hey,” he said, “if you’re going to completely ignore a meeting that’s actually _all about you_ , which is really awkward for everyone, by the way, just to work on whatever secret coding project you’re going to tell me about in about two weeks when it blows up in our faces, you might as well have these.” He produced Rush’s glasses, which had had their battered frames replaced by a pretty creditable repair job. “Brody fixed them, but he’s scared of you.”

“I see you found the machine shop,” Rush said. He was turning the frames over in his hands, inspecting the careful work. “You know, you really shouldn’t wander around unsecured areas of the ship.”

“Yeah, yeah. Maybe you should start leading by example,” Eli said. He stuck his hands in his pockets and started to wander off.

“Eli,” Rush said.

Eli turned.

“Tell Brody—“ Rush paused. He didn’t look up. “This is acceptable work.”

* * *

After the last group meeting had ended, and the crew had dispersed, Young pulled Greer and Scott aside.  //Time to get this over with,// he sent to Rush.

Rush paused, hands suspended over his keyboard. He tried and failed to hide the surge of dread that Young’s comment had produced.

//Yeah. You and me both,// Young said.

The four of them headed to the communications room. Scott was going to be switching with Telford, as he often did. He didn’t ask why Rush and Greer were there, though his eyes flicked to Rush in a way that suggested he had questions. When they reached the doorway of the room, he turned to Young and offered his gun without being prompted. Young took it, pocketed the clip, and then did the same with his own weapon.

“Go on in,” he told Scott. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

Scott nodded. His eyes again slid to Rush and Greer, but he simply turned and entered the room.

Young locked the door behind him. “Sergeant,” he said to Greer, “I need you to do two things for me. The first is to make sure Telford doesn’t leave that room. I don’t think he’s going to try, but on the off-chance that he does— use nonlethal force, obviously.”

Greer nodded.

“The second,” Young said, “is to watch him.” He pointed at Rush.

“ _What_ ,” Rush said darkly.

“The connection between us is damaged,” Young explained in a lower voice, glancing down the hallway on the off-chance that someone might be approaching them. “He’s going to be right next to the wall, and I’m going to be on the other side, but that’s about as far apart as we can get. So I need you talk to him, and if he stops responding to you, I need you to come get me. He’s almost certainly going to get—“ Young paused, searching for the right word. “Kind of weird. That’s okay. But if he stops responding at all, you need to come and get me immediately.”

“Excuse me!” Rush snapped. “I am _right here_ , you realize.”

“Yeah, for _now_ you are,” Young said. “Let’s keep it that way.” He turned back to Greer. “Understood?”

“Got it,” Greer said.

“And _you_.” Young took hold of Rush’s shoulders and gently pushed him back against the corridor wall. “Stay _right here_ , and don’t make this difficult.”

He could feel Rush gearing up for a spectacular explosion, but before he got the chance for it, Young had hit the door controls and left him in the hallway, glaring irritably at Greer.

As soon as he entered the room, he could see that Scott had switched with Telford. The man who was standing in the room with him, leaning against the communications table, was all hard, sharp angles and impatient lines. Telford’s eyes always had something of the hawk in them, no matter whose eyes he was actually using– not because they were good at watching, but because they were good at spotting prey.

Young was going to need to throw him off his game. He leaned against the wall nearest the door. He could feel Rush on the other side, but only barely. The headache that had spun up was killing him. He was going to need to not let Telford throw _him_ off his game, because his body was doing a pretty good job of that all on its own.

“Everett,” Telford said shortly.

“David,” Young returned.

“You have full power back, I see.”

“We do.”

There was a silence.

“How did he do it?” Telford said at last. His tone was conversational, but his body was as tense as a pulled-back bow.

“Do what?” Young asked mildly.

“Don’t bullshit me, Everett. I’m your _commanding officer_.”

Young smiled humorlessly and shook his head. “You don’t outrank me, David, and you’re here at my discretion. As far as I’m concerned, you’re the military liaison between Homeworld Command and the Destiny. That’s it.”

Telford studied him with flat eyes. “That’s really how you want to play this?”

“This isn’t your command,” Young said, emphasizing each word carefully. “Not anymore.”

Another silence. Young had the sense that he was being measured and weighed as a threat.

Abruptly Telford looked away and said, “I want to talk to Rush.”

Young didn’t even pause. “Not a chance.”

“I can take this up the chain, you know. Come back with an order.”

“Are you even going to ask if he’s okay?” Young was losing his congenial manner. “After the stunt you pulled? Do you even give a damn?”

“Do _you?_ ” Telford shot back. “You’ve almost killed him how many times, now? Not that I blame you. The man always seems to be begging for it. He’s a goddamn snake.”

“Takes one to know one,” Young said, deliberately echoing the language he’d heard in Rush’s dream.

Telford’s eyes flicked to him, so fast that Young wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been watching for it.

“Yeah,” Young said. “He told me.”

“ _What?”_ Telford whispered. But he recovered his equilibrium quickly. “Told you _what?_ ”

“About your little _experiment.”_ He was aware that he was walking a delicate tightrope. He didn’t have much information to use.

Telford’s lip curled. “Oh, what did he tell you? Let me guess. He went crying to you about how we _forced_ him, about how he didn’t _want_ to do it. That’s bullshit, Everett. You’re being played. You know what he’s like; you know you can’t trust what he says. You think any of us _wanted_ to do it? Even Jackson knew that there was no point in pushing the Icarus project further if we couldn’t bring someone up to the minimum threshold requirements laid out in the Ancient texts. It didn’t matter what we _wanted_ , any of us. It was irrelevant.”

“Landry told him he had to do it if he wanted Icarus,” Young said levelly. “You specifically maneuvered him—“

“Well, who else were we going to get to do it?” Telford cut him off. “Sure, we could have used Sheppard, but even he was only a distant second best. No one else came _close_. The first time we walked into that lab, it lit up for him like he owned the whole goddamned place. What does _that_ tell you?”

Young didn’t say anything.

“What it tells _me_ ,” Telford said fiercely, “is that we made the right choice, even if we didn’t get the results we wanted. And he _agreed_ to it, so don’t start making me out like I’m some kind of cartoon villain. He _agreed_ to it.”

“Because you pushed him!” Young said, more hotly than he’d intended.

“You’re goddamn right I pushed him. Given what was on the line? Sure I did. And maybe some things happened between us that I could have handled a little better. But you should be _glad_ I pushed him, because you would have been _fucked_ without me. You would have _never_ have accessed _any_ of the Destiny’s systems. You think a software buffer would have been enough to protect anyone else from the neural interface? That the AI would’ve—“

Suddenly he stopped, staring at Young. “Unless it’s past that, at this stage,” he murmured. “Unless it _did_ work, after all, and you’ve been, shall we say, a little bit cagey with the truth. You wouldn’t do that, though, would you, Everett? I always thought you were the straight arrow.”

His expression— poised somewhere halfway between suspicion and a dark incipient satisfaction— made Young intensely nervous. He felt he had to act fast to divert Telford’s train of thought. Fortunately, he could tap into the well of rage that had been building in him through their meeting, intermingling with the headache that was out of his control. “You were _compromised,”_ he snapped, “during your goddamn ‘experiment.’ What were you going to do if you succeeded? Hand him over to the Lucian Alliance? To Kiva?”

That struck home, as he’d known it would. “He was _always_ going to be a target for the Lucian Alliance,” Telford said, defensive. “And I would have protected him from Kiva.”

“I’m sure,” Young said witheringly. “I’m sure he would’ve _loved_ being under your special _protection_.”

Telford’s eyes narrowed, perhaps picking up some ugly hint of innuendo that Young hadn’t entirely intended to give. “…What did he tell you?”

“We’re done here,” Young said.

“We’re nowhere _near_ done here. This is _my_ project, Everett. _Rush_ was _my_ project, and if it _worked_ , if he—“

Young’s headache was reaching unmanageable levels. He thought it was probably due to the separation from Rush, though he wasn’t ruling out that some of it had to do with what he’d heard from Telford, which was frankly enough to make anyone feel sick. He had to get out of the room before the walls started spinning or he risked some kind of revealing collapse.

“We’re _done_ ,” he said. “I have another meeting.”

“You can’t dismiss me,” Telford hissed.

“I just did. But hey— feel free to stay in this locked room for as long as you like.” Young pulled out his radio. “Sergeant. Open the door, please.”

“Everett,” Telford said, advancing on him. “You can’t do this.”

“I just did,” Young said as the door hissed open. “Nice talking to you, David.”

He hit the door controls as soon as he was on the other side, trapping Telford in the room. Leaning against the wall, he worked his way towards Greer and Rush. Removing the bulkhead from between him and Rush had improved the state of his head considerably, but confused shocks of pain were still rebounding around his skull.

“Hammer group,” Greer snapped at Rush. “Come on. At this rate, there’s no way you’re going to clear your _pathetic_ personal best of forty-seven seconds.”

It took Young a minute to understand what he was looking at.

Greer and Rush were sitting on the floor, pieces of Greer’s disassembled assault rifle scattered around them. Greer had both hands fisted in Rush’s jacket and was keeping Rush upright while Rush vaguely attempted to assemble the gun.

“My fourteen-year-old cousin is better at this than you are,” Greer said. “Come on, Doc. Get with it. Optical sight group.”

Young knelt down next to them, and Greer shot him a relieved look. Disregarding what Greer might think, Young put his arm over Rush’s shoulders. Rush blinked, and his movements grew steadier and quicker. He snapped together the magazine and the butt plate.

“Frame and trigger,” Greer prompted. “You’re already at thirty seconds.”

“I’m aware of that,” Rush said testily, and Greer relaxed a bit further, loosening his grip on Rush’s jacket. Rush brought the last pieces into place, and Greer checked his watch.

“Thirty-four seconds,” he said. “I could have killed you three times over.”

"I'd welcome it, at this stage."

“You need to work on this. Chloe’s better than you. A _lot_ better.”

“I don’t view that as an insult.” Rush glared at him.

“Thanks, Sergeant,” Young said to Greer, helping Rush to his feet. “Telford and Scott should be switching back shortly. Keep an eye out and make sure we’ve got Scott back, would you?”

Greer nodded.

Young turned to Rush. “Are you all right?”

“I’m _fine,_ ” Rush snapped. He didn’t really look fine. He looked like he was about to fall over. He pushed himself free of Young’s touch.

Young hesitated, but figured it wasn’t worth fighting over. “Okay, well— you wanted to go check on the AI?”

Rush nodded. It took him a minute to manage enough coordination to get his crutches under him, but once he had, he headed off purposefully in the direction of the CI room. Young sighed, picked up his laptop and followed him.

“What did Colonel Telford have to say?” Rush asked at length, after Young had caught up to him, just when the silence between them was starting to seem strained. The tone of his voice was extremely, uncharacteristically formal.

“Just— excuses,” Young said. “Nothing that would interest you.” He was working hard to obscure his thoughts from Rush. He tried to focus on Telford and the Lucian Alliance, which was still an emotional enough subject to drown out most of what was in his head. He wondered how easy it would be to fake being under their control. He wondered if Telford was devious enough to have them brainwash him after he’d already given them his loyalty.

“Hmm,” Rush said. “Secrets.” He sounded dissatisfied.

Young said mildly, “You tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine.”

Rush gave him a disdainful look.

* * *

When they reached the control interface room, Rush had Young set his laptop on a monitor. “Unfortunately, I’ll have to do this the long way,” he said.

“The _long_ way?” Young echoed.

“Via computer.”

“As opposed to?”

“Without a computer,” Rush said unhelpfully. “I doubt you’d get me back if I tried _that_ right now.”

“Great,” Young said, stifling a sigh. He took a seat, figuring that he was probably going to be stuck there for a good few hours.

That turned out to be prescient. It took three hours before Rush was satisfied that there was no damage to the Destiny’s central processor.

“None anywhere,” he said, sounding perplexed.

“That sounds like a good thing,” Young said, stifling a yawn. It had really— God— been a _long_ day.

“I don’t believe it,” Rush murmured.

“Why?”

“Because I haven’t seen her.”

“Gloria,” Young said.

“Yes.”

“Maybe that’s because you’re with me. She— or— _it_ seems a little wary about my whole involvement.”

“Maybe.” Rush looked at him. “Hopefully.”

“We can figure it out tomorrow,” Young said. “Come on; if I’m tired, then you’ve got to be dead on your feet.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Rush insisted.

Young rolled his eyes. “Of course you are.”

By the time they made it to Young’s quarters, after an extremely slow, difficult, and intermittent walk that had been punctuated by Rush getting snappish and Young losing patience with him, Rush was arguably already mostly asleep. Still:

“I’ll sleep on the floor,” he murmured vaguely, leaning heavily on his crutches.

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” Young said. He was already stripping off his jacket and tossing it over the sofa. He did _not_ have the energy for this conversation.

“ _I_ am not sleeping in _your_ bed.”

“Uh-huh. Okay. Just sit here for a minute while I get your boots off.”

Rush glared at him, but took a seat on the corner of the bed. Young knelt down to loosen the knots of his bootlaces and pull the boots off. From there, it was easy to lift Rush’s feet up and push him back, till he was lying prone with his head mostly on top of one of the pillows.

“No,” Rush complained.

“Yes,” Young said. “It’s happening. Deal with it.”

He managed to get them both under the duvet— if Rush was still awake at this point, it didn’t show. The previous night excepted, Young was a pretty neat sleeper, so he figured if he left a big enough space, they could each of them stay on their own side, and Rush would have nothing to whine about in the morning. It was fine. It would all be just— fine.

He stared at the ceiling. He was thinking about what Telford had said. That Sheppard had been their second choice for— whatever. Presumably it had to do with Ancient genetics. He hadn’t even known that Rush had started out with the Ancient gene. He’d known about Sheppard, of course, because everyone knew about Sheppard. The fuck-up regular-joe pilot whose magic gene gave him a second chance. Just goes to show, said the people who’d known him at McMurdo, that you never could tell. Sheppard? Part alien? But Young wasn’t convinced; he thought you could tell. He wondered if Sheppard and Rush had been able to tell. If they had always known that there was something different about them, but they hadn’t known what or what it was good for or how to put it into words. If they had found themselves waiting for some moment when the source of all their isolation would finally reveal itself, the way the end of a book appears to make sense of what’s come before it. To give some kind of structure to the universe, because otherwise it was just— random, and brutal, and there weren’t any reasons, and you were very lonely, and then you died.

That was bad thinking, probably. He had a feeling Rush would mock him for it. Rush probably thought that everything _was_ random and brutal. But Young… wanted him not to think that. Which was a terrible thing to want— a weed in the garden of his mind, sprouting where he hadn’t wanted it sown, and if he hadn’t been so tired, he would have paid it more attention and probably pulled it up by the roots. But he was, and so he didn’t. He thought vaguely that it couldn’t really matter very much.

He could hear Rush breathing softly beside him and, oddly lulled by the sound, he slept.


	12. Chapter 12

_Young dreams that he’s in Mogadishu, but the city is deserted. He can smell the not-very-far-off sea. He’s wandering wide pale streets between shrapnel-ridden buildings, narrow alleys between scrap-metal market stalls. It’s beautiful despite everything: the bright cloth of the awnings, the cut fruit, the just-caught fish, and the fat bulk of the palm trees. But he’s— he’s carrying his rifle, and he feels a prickle of dread for some reason, like a trail of cold sweat running down his neck. There’s someone he’s supposed to find and protect; that’s his mission. In fact, he can just see the edge of their shadow turning around the next corner. But when he too turns the corner, no one is there. He tries calling in air support on his radio, but no one answers. There’s just static. That unsettles him even more. He wonders if something’s happened, if the militia have taken down comms, if that’s why he’s completely alone._

_He sees the shadow again, and he jogs after it. It’s hard work; he’s carrying a lot of gear, and he’s not as agile as he was when he was actually— because he’s not actually— because that was sixteen years ago, and it was his first deployment, and he’d— it’s confusing, see, in this kind of dream. The confusion starts to panic him a little._

_“Hey!” he calls out to whomever it is he’s chasing. “Stop running! I’m trying to rescue you!”_

_But he doesn’t hear anything back in response._

_He feels like someone might be watching from the windows. You can’t trust anybody in this kind of place. He knows it’s not true, but he’d been twenty-four, then, and he’d seen the pictures. The whole city had felt like an elaborate trap._

_“Hello?” he yells again. “Can you stop running?”_

_He thinks he can hear their footsteps. But he just can’t ever seem to quite catch up._

_A bird startles him, a seagull, crying out from a rooftop, and he instinctively brings his rifle up._

_“It’s a bird,” Rush says, because Rush is here with him, squinting up at the bright sun. “Where are we?”_

_“Somalia,” Young says._

_Rush looks confused. “But I’ve never been to Somalia.”_

_“Look, I don’t have time for this,” Young says. “I have to rescue—“ For some reason he wants to say_ you _, but that’s clearly not right. He stops and frowns. “Someone.”_

_“Of course you do,” Rush says, rolling his eyes. He gestures impatiently. “Well, carry on.”_

_For a while they walk through the streets, pursuing the shadow that always seems to be barely, barely ahead of them. The sun never moves in the sky. Flies don’t cloud the markets. Rush inspects the silver fish and heaps of fruit. He seems vaguely interested at first, but he quickly grows bored with the whole endeavor. He leans against a stone wall and lights a cigarette._

_“This is unbelievably tedious,” he complains._

_“Get down,” Young hisses. “You can’t just stand out there in the open. Someone’s going to shoot you.”_

_“I’d rather be dead than endlessly trudging round identical corners.”_

_“Well, I’m sorry that not everything in life can be for your amusement!” Young says, irritated. “Why are you here, anyway?”_

_Rush pauses and frowns. “I’m not—“ he says, sounding unsure. “I don’t think I—“_

_Then something—_ happens _, and he disappears. It’s like he’s traveling a long way away without going anywhere at all, and Young tries to reach out for him. “No, don’t!” he says, because something feels wrong about Rush going. His stomach plummets into his feet. But he can’t— quite— hold— on— to— Rush’s— hand—_

* * *

When Young awoke, he found that Rush was already up and sitting at the end of the bed. He was fully dressed and wearing his glasses, rubbing at the back of his neck and thinking in unhappy circles that masked some obscure agitation. Young couldn’t make any sense out of the contents of his thoughts: a bootprint across a sheet of music, Telford leaning in too close to light Rush’s cigarette, the hum of a hyperdrive engine, a shabby kitchen with sagging wallpaper, a half-erased whiteboard, Gloria laughing, the California sun—

Rush felt the touch against his mind and turned. The sense of unease Young had picked up didn’t seem to lessen, though Rush was trying not to let it show. Rush said, “Our—“ He had to break off suddenly, surprised at how difficult he was finding the transition from Ancient. He’d been thinking in the language, Young realized. He made a quick hand gesture indicating a line cut by a circle. “Radius. Our radius is improving.”

Young raised himself up to his elbows. “You just had to push it, huh?”

“We’re at about five meters now.” At Young’s dubious look, Rush amended, “Well— four meters. Enough to brush my teeth in splendid fucking isolation.”

“That’s a good sign, isn’t it?”

Rush looked away. He seemed anxious to avoid Young’s gaze.

Young could think of one possible explanation. “Look,” he said. “I’m sorry about last night. I’m sure there are places you’d rather wake up. But I’m not going to let you sleep on the _floor_ when you’re—“

“It’s fine,” Rush said quickly. “Thank you.”

Young raised his eyebrows.

“Oh, what?” Rush said, glancing at him for the first time, amused. “I am, actually, familiar with the concept of politeness on more than theoretical grounds.”

“You really don’t have to thank me,” Young said.

Rush shrugged. He still seemed troubled.

“Is there… something else bothering you?” Young asked.

Rush made a vague, absent noise. “Have you ever been to Somalia?”

Young stared at him. It was a such a weird fucking question, and weirder because for some reason it didn’t _feel_ as weird as it should. He frowned, trying to chase something he could almost but not quite remember. “Um,” he said. “Yeah, my first deployment. 1994. Why?”

Rush studied him for a moment, then carefully looked away again. “No reason."

“O… kay…” Young said, letting the word trail off. He sat up, balancing his arms on his knees. “Listen, are you…” He broke off, wanting to phrase the question right. “Are you doing okay with all of this?”

It astonished him that the question hadn’t occurred to him before now. He wondered if anyone had bothered to ask Rush. Something about Rush seemed so untouchable, like nothing could get to him, until, of course, inevitably, it did.

A humorless half-smile crossed Rush’s features. “You actually give a damn, don’t you? I can tell.”

“Of course I do.”

“You shouldn’t,” Rush said. His face was closed.

Young frowned at him. “I can’t tell if you’re just saying that because of whatever weird psychological complex leads you to absolutely refuse to—“

“Look, _Colonel Young,_ ” Rush interrupted, his tone icy.

Young winced. Rush hadn’t addressed him like that in a while. There was a brutal rebuff in it, an enforcement of distance.

“I understand that you have a vested interest in my mental well-being, given that it is directly tied to the fate of the ship. I assure you that any pertinent information will be shared in a timely manner.”

“Rush, that’s not—“ Young felt bewildered. “That’s not what I was asking.”

“Oh, what? Are you supposed to trust me now? Am I supposed to trust _you_? Sorry; you missed the boat on that one when you left me for dead on a _deserted fucking planet._ If you’re honest with yourself, you don’t actually trust me either. And you’re right not to.”

“What does _that_ mean?” Young asked sharply.

“You know exactly what it means. You know me.” Rush looked away. His arms were folded tightly across his chest.

Young paused. He felt like he was fumbling through a darkened cave, unsure he if was about lose his balance and bring the whole thing down around his head. “Do I?” he said. “I know— I know that the ship is hurting you. I know that the AI tries to protect you, but it also seems to have no problem with you being in pain. It told me that fighting the ship could kill you, but you don’t seem to care. You didn’t even bother to tell me. Which makes me think that you don’t think it _matters_. That makes me worry what’s going to happen if we reach this— energy breakwater, or whatever.”

Rush was quiet for a moment. “I don’t know what you’re implying,” he said slowly. “But if you think that I would _ever_ do anything to hurt the crew— that I would leave them here when—“

“I’m not accusing you of anything,” Young said. “I want to _help_ you. I want to help _you_. So can you just— let me do that?”

Rush didn’t look convinced. But before he could launch another attempt to put distance between them, or alienate Young, or make him want to punch Rush in the mouth, or whatever the next step was in this latest incredible plan, Young’s radio crackled.

“Colonel Young,” Scott said. “This is Lieutenant Scott. We’ve got an emergency in one of the uncleared labs. Apparently a machine turned on? No word on what it’s doing yet.”

Young sighed. “This conversation is not over,” he warned Rush.

“No,” Rush murmured. “Somehow I didn’t think I was that lucky.”

“I’m on my way,” Young radioed to Scott. To Rush, he said, “Any ideas?”

“I’d have to see it. I’m not bloody omniscient.” Rush’s tone was deliberately dry, a thin layer over the turmoil still churning his thoughts to mud.

“Such modesty,” Young retorted, equally careful to keep his tone light.

Rush’s radio went off. “Dr. Rush, this is Brody. Please respond.”

“Yes, yes,” Rush snapped. “I’m already aware. Who turned it on?”

“Um— Volker and me,” Brody said, apologetic.

“Don’t touch anything till I get there. Anything _else_.”

“Just so you know, it seems to be building up some kind of charge.”

Rush sighed, raking his hair back. “Of course it is.”

* * *

As Rush and Young rounded the doorway to the lab in question, they saw Brody, Volker, and Eli positioned in front of a device that appeared to be built into the flat surface of a table-like structure. Greer and Scott were hovering to the left of the doorway, warily eyeing the device’s glowing blue glyphs.

“Hi,” Eli said. “Before you say anything, this was _not_ my fault.”

Rush shot him a skeptical look.

“Okay, maybe if I hadn’t tried to cut the power buildup by removing it from Destiny’s internal grid, we would still have access to the interface, which you could have used to turn the thing off, but—“

Rush pushed past him, eyes on the device. “Access to the primary interface is blocked?”

“Force field,” Eli confirmed.

Rush stopped directly in front of the primary interface panel and and cautiously lowered his hand towards its surface. As soon as the edge of his sleeve approached the field, it flared to life— a small visible portion of it swirling angrily just under the point of contact.

//?// Young asked him.

//I thought I might be exempt.//

//Exempt from a _force field?_ //

Rush ignored him, ducking around the back of the machine to look for an access panel. He ran his fingers over the surface and found the concealed release. The panel fell into his waiting hands, exposing glowing circuitry. He moved it to the side and sat with some difficulty, trying to protect his injured feet. Young dropped into a crouch next to him, eyeing the back of the device.

//Do me a favor and watch the monitors while I do this,// Rush said.

//That’s pushing it. It’s going to be about twelve feet.//

//Our time is limited. We don’t want this thing discharging.//

“Fair enough,” Young murmured, and stood. //What am I looking for?//

// _You’re_ not looking for anything. _I’m_ going to be watching them while I fix this.//

Young’s head was pounding by the time he made it to the monitor bank. He tried to ignore the brewing dizziness as best he could. He saw that Greer had instinctively taken up a position adjacent to Rush— maybe to stop him from doing anything stupid, or just to protect him, since someone needed to.

//Are you getting this?// Young projected. He felt like he was shouting. The damage to their link made Rush feel about a mile away. But he could sense Rush in his head, a thin ghostly presence.

//Mostly,// Rush said, sounding strained.

“You haven’t made a dent in the power buildup yet,” Eli said.

Rush snapped, “It’s only been three minutes!’’

“Well, I only bring it up because it’s starting to level off. So whatever it does, it’s probably about to do it.”

“Rush!” Young said sharply. “Get back over here!”

//One moment.//

“Greer,” Young said. “Pull him back _now_.”

Greer reached down to snag the back of Rush’s jacket, poised to drag him up and pull him away– but before he could do so, a blue-white glare erupted around them. Young covered his eyes against the brightness, and—

* * *

**Loop 1, 0 Minutes**

When Young awoke, he found that Rush was already up and sitting at the end of the bed. He was fully dressed and wearing his glasses, staring around the room, and panic was exploding in his mind. Young couldn’t make sense of it; it was too fast and too scattershot, anxiety disassembling anything resembling a coherent thought.

He sat up, abruptly concerned. “Rush? What’s going on?”

Rush turned to look at him, eyes wild. “What time is it?” he asked intensely, as though something important depended on his answer.

Young checked his watch. “Um, oh eight hundred and forty seven minutes, I guess. Why?”

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Rush demanded.

Young paused. “… Falling asleep?” he offered.

“Fuck,” Rush spit, surging to his feet. “I’m going to _murder_ them.”

 _“_ Whoa,” Young said, holding up a hand. “Let’s just wait a—“

“Eli,” Rush said into his radio. “Eli, come in. Eli, respond to me _right now._ ”

“Yeah, I missed you too,” Eli said after a staticky pause, “and as much as I’d like to listen to you yell at me about your pet peeve du jour, we’re kinda busy over here. We just discovered a device in one of the uncleared labs that seems to be _on_. And _doing_ something. Maybe—“

“Tell me you remember the last fifteen minutes,” Rush demanded. “Tell me you remember that device discharging.”

“Uh,” Eli said slowly. “So, on the insanity scale? You’re at about an eight right now, just so you know.”

//I’ll second that,// Young said. //What’s going on?//

“Crazy or not, though,” Eli added, “we could use your help. So get down here.”

“Rush,” Young said. “Seriously. What’s happening?”

Rush sent him a quick sequence of mental images of a device covered in glowing blue glyphs, and of a searing light that burst out of it before Rush found himself back in Young’s quarters.

//Was I supposed to understand that?// Young asked dubiously.

//We’re operating in different frames of reference, you and I.// Rush had passed some frantic threshold beyond which he could no longer control his panic. His mental projections had grown so jittery that they set Young’s teeth on edge. The next one was a gridded three-dimensional images with moving objects passing through it. //T(b)-T(a) does _not_ fucking equal T(b)’-T(a)’!//

//Okay,// Young said, trying to project as much calm as possible.

//We’re NOT TEMPORALLY SYNCHRONIZED,// Rush sent. He seemed close to hyperventilating. //Time is a reversible coordinate, in the same manner as space, and fucking _Volker_ just reset everyone but _me_ by roughly fifteen minutes.//

//Let’s just sit down and talk about this,// Young said gently. //It’s really hard to understand you right now.//

Rush had started pacing haltingly back and forth. //Hard to understand me? _Did I stop speaking English?_ I’m so glad we’re linked and we can’t fucking separate!// He drew a huge breath. //You are stuck in some kind of repeating temporal pattern. You’re reliving a fifteen- to twenty-minute segment of time. I, for reasons yet unknown, am not.//

Young considered this. Stranger things had happened, sure, but it was hard for him to judge how rational Rush was right now.

//Give me your watch,// Rush demanded.

//You need to calm down,// Young said.

“Giving me your fucking watch and let’s go.” Rush stretched out his hand. “You’re wasting time!”

Young unbuckled his watch from his wrist.

“Come on, come on; this is intolerable!” Rush fumed.

Before Young had even finished pulling his boots and jacket on, Rush was already out the door. When he burst into the lab, he blew past the science team without even glancing at them, headed for the back of a glowing blue device.

“Hey,” Eli called after him. “Nice to see you too. Thanks for your input.”

“Were you the one working on this?” Volker asked.

Rush shot him a withering look.

// _Was_ this you?// Young asked. //Did you turn this thing on in the last loop, or whatever we’re calling this?//

//That question is so colossally stupid that I’m tempted not to respond, but those kinds of things seem to go over your head, so: no, of course it wasn’t fucking me. When this thing was activated, I was sitting uselessly in your quarters, _not_ talking about my feelings, and getting accused of some poorly defined plan to fuck over the crew. Just what exactly is it about me that you find so goddamned sinister?//

//I think you’re overreacting,// Young projected. He hadn’t understood all of that, but he had a pretty good sense that Rush was working himself up to the point where he wasn’t thinking clearly.

Something in his peripheral vision drew his gaze, and he turned to see that Greer had appeared in the doorway, moving slowly, a strange and unsettled expression on his face.

“Sergeant?” Young asked.

“Sir,” Greer said, “I know how this is going to sound, but I think that—“ he gestured at the table. “That _thing_ maybe have already gone off.”

Rush’s head snapped up, relief slamming into Young’s head. “Sergeant,” Rush called. “You remember?”

“I think so,” Greer said uncertainly.

“Here.” Rush tossed Greer the watch he had borrowed from Young. “We need to determine two things: how long the loop is, and whether we can effect lasting changes other than to this machine. Do you have a knife?”

Greer looked trepidatiously at Young.

“Why do you need a knife?” Young asked Rush.

“So I can fucking open an artery and put myself out of my god-damned misery, all right?”

“Okay, settle down,” Young said.

“Fuck you. Fuck all of you. Greer, give me that knife."

Greer pulled out the knife and crossed the room to where Rush was working. “You didn’t say please,” he said. He handled it to Rush handle-first.

Rush carefully used the knife to make a short, shallow cut at the base of his palm. Then he handed the knife to Young. “You do the same,” he said.

“And this is supposed to prove what, exactly?” Young asked skeptically. But he did as he was told.

“Whether there’s physical reset when the device discharges. If our reference frames are discontinuous but colocalized, yours will be gone and mine won’t.”

“Power is leveling off!” Eli called.

“Time,” Rush snapped at Greer.

“Sixteen minutes, fifty-eight—“

Young shut his eyes against a searing flare of blue-white light.

* * *

**Loop 2, 0 Minutes**

“God _damn_ it,” Rush shouted, waking Young up as he sent one of his crutches hurtling into the wall. “Seventeen minutes is _too short_.” He spun to face the bed. “Hold our your hand,” he demanded.

“Are you _insane?_ ” Young asked him.

“Getting there,” Rush said. He grabbed Young’s left hand and turned it over, then placed his own left hand beside it. Rush had a small cut at the base of his palm.

“I knew it,” Rush murmured.

* * *

**Loop 3, 11 Minutes**

“Rush,” Greer said as they entered the lab. “Eleven minutes? You’ve gotta be faster if you want to fix this thing.”

“I’m aware,” Rush snapped. “ _You_ try explaining this to him next time.”

Young crossed his arms, glaring at Rush. “You didn’t mention anything about Greer being in on this time loop.”

“Thanks for pointing that out. I’ll be sure to mention it when I explain it to you again in _six minutes_.”

“Um, guys, sorry to interrupt,” Eli said, “but I’m reading that Destiny is significantly displaced from our calculated course. We’re over eight hundred million kilometers from where we should have been.”

“Oh, look,” Rush said viciously. “Independent verification that I’m not having a nervous breakdown. How nice.”

“Rush,” Young said wearily. He was starting to get a headache.

“Can you just hurry up and fix the damn thing?” Greer said.

“Very helpful, Sergeant, thank you. I’m so glad we’re getting this chance to work together. What would I do without your brilliant insights?”

// _Rush_ ,// Young said again. //Stop antagonizing the one guy who’s going to remember everything you say.//

“Where do you get off being such an asshole?” Greer demanded.

“Oh, please. As though you’re some lovable paragon of human politeness.”

Greer crossed the space between them and grabbed ahold of Rush’s jacket, yanking him to his feet in one effortless move. “I’m not,” he snapped at Rush. “You think I don’t know that? I’ve lived through some pretty fucked-up shit and I’d bet my fruit ration that you have too. You know what else we’ve got in common? I still wake up every morning and get off my ass because I have to go protect this crew from the goddamn Lucian Alliance, or creepy fungus monsters, or flesh-eating bugs, or whatever other fucking thing they need protecting from. No matter what. So if you can’t respect anything else about me, respect _that._ ”

Rush stared at him.

Abruptly Greer pushed him back down to the floor. “So _fix_ the damn thing, will you?”

“I’m working on it,” Rush said.

* * *

**Loop 4, 2 Minutes**

“Look,” Young said reasonably. “There’s a really simple way for you to show me that you’re not losing your damn mind. Just let me have a look inside it.”

“You’d love that, wouldn’t you?” Rush snapped. “No. Fuck you.” He was pacing back and forth agitatedly in front of the bed.

“It’s not that I don’t believe you; you just seem a little bit…” Young hesitated. “You know, the way you get.”

“Oh, really,” Rush said icily. “And what is _that_ supposed to mean _?_ Do enlighten me.”

Young swallowed a groan and made a vague hand gesture. “You know, you just—“

There was a knock at the door. A voice came over the intercom: “It’s Greer.”

“Come,” Young said without thinking.

Rush made an abortive movement and then sighed, turning towards the wall and grimacing.

“Colonel, I know how this is going to sound,” Greer said, entering the room, “but—“

He stopped and did a double-take, glancing from Rush to Young, who was still half-dressed in bed.

“Um,” Greer said, looking somewhere between amused and startled, “this is really more than I wanted to know.”

“We’re not sleeping together,” Rush snapped.

“Really? Because it kinda looks like—“

“We may have slept in close proximity, yes, but it is _not_ the same thing.”

“Good times,” Greer said.

“Do I look like I’m having even a remotely good time?”

“Not really, no,” Greer said.

* * *

**Loop 6, 16 Minutes**

Young stood watching Rush work. Rush’s weather was spiky with anxiety, laid over a dull bed of frustration and distress. He was clearly fraying at the edges, which didn’t bode well for the prospects of fixing the time loop.

This loop, Rush had gotten in seven minutes with the device, which wasn’t really very much time when you were trying to repair a piece of Ancient technology you’d never seen.

The problem was that neither Rush nor Greer was very good at explaining things in a concise, trustworthy manner, or, for that matter, at not sounding insane.

“Hey,” Young said. “I have a suggestion for next time.”

“What,” Rush snapped without looking up.

Young sighed. He said, “I think this situation is grave enough that you should consider playing to your strengths.”

“Twenty seconds,” Greer said.

Young pulled out his sidearm and handed it to an astonished Rush. “Don’t make me regret this,” he said.

* * *

**Loop 7, 0 Minutes**

Young opened his eyes to find Rush holding a gun to his head.

“Really sorry about this,” Rush said, looking not at all sorry, and, in fact, slightly pleased. “But we’ve got to go.”

* * *

**Loop 8, 6 Minutes**

“Okay, people!” Greer yelled, chambering a round in his weapon. “This is a _time loop_. We’re trying to fix it, but we’ve only got eleven minutes before the loop resets. So we’re going to implement the following policies: number one, no one moves. Number two, no one talks to Rush.”

“Time loop?” Eli asked skeptically. “You made that up.”

“We’re in asynchronous reference frames or some shit, okay?” Greer said.

Young pressed one hand to his head, fighting a headache. //This was _your_ idea, wasn’t it?// he shot at Rush. //I don’t know _how_ you convinced Greer to go along with this.//

//No talking,// Rush snapped at him.

* * *

**Loop 13, 14 Minutes**

“Sorry about this, Doc,” Greer said quietly, holding his hands up and staring at Lieutenant Scott, who had his sidearm pointed at Greer’s face.

“You start taking civilian hostages and screwing around with Ancient technology and you’re apologizing to _him?_ ” Young snapped.

Greer wasn’t looking at him, though. He was watching Rush.

“Would you _stop_ it,” Young said to Rush shortly. He was trying to restrain Rush without hurting him, but Rush was determined to twist out of the shoulder lock that Young had him in. His mind was a mess— he seemed to be trying to block Young out, but the more he did so, the more that shredded pieces were managing to bleed out, hitting Young like a slap to the face and making it hard for him to just _do what he had to do._ The taste of blood and road tar in his mouth, a fly buzzing against a window, an announcer on the radio talking about the World Cup, a dark ceiling seen from underneath water, and David Telford's fucking face again, always Telford, which just made Young _irrationally angry_ —

// _Stop it,_ // he sent to Rush, practically kneeling on his lower back. //I don’t want to hurt you; _don’t make me hurt you_.//

“Rush,” Greer said insistently. He had a pained expression. “ _Rush_. It’s not worth it, man. You’re going to blow out your shoulder, and for what? For three minutes? Just let it go.”

Rush jerked against Young’s grip and then slowly subsided. He was shivering, though, slightly, under Young’s hands.

* * *

**Loop 14, 2 Minutes**

“I believe you that something’s wrong,” Young said. He was holding his hands up, trying to seem as nonthreatening as possible, because whatever was wrong seemed to mostly be wrong with _Rush_. He was backed up against the wall, holding Young’s sidearm in an extremely unsteady grip. His mind was frenetically cycling through a shattered window’s worth of fragments, very few of which seemed able to cohere. “But let’s just— talk through this, okay? Maybe you could just show me what you remember.”

“Stay out of my head,” Rush snapped, brandishing the gun.

“I’m not going to do anything you don’t want,” Young said soothingly. “Look, I’m right here. Nothing’s changed since last night.”

“I know,” Rush said, and for some reason he sounded despairing. “I know it hasn’t.”

He lowered the gun, as though he no longer had the strength to hold it, and stared at Young for a moment, waiting. Then he brought the gun up again.

“You were supposed to tackle me,” he said somewhat listlessly. “I gave you an opening. Isn’t that what you’re trained to do?”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to hurt you,” Young said. “And you’re not going to shoot me.”

“No,” Rush agreed. He tipped his head back against the wall, looking miserable.

There was a knock at the door.

“It’s Greer,” Rush said.

* * *

**Loop 15, 0 Minutes**

Young woke up as Rush lay down beside him on the bed.

“Can I just,” Rush said, and didn’t finish the sentence.

“Mm-hm,” Young said drowsily, eyes half-closing. Then he blinked. Rush’s shoulders and wrists ached as though he’d been beaten, and his feet felt like they’d been torn apart. His head was cloudy and bruised-feeling.

“What _happened_?” Young asked him, appalled.

Rush didn’t reply.

Young sat up, reaching for his shoulder, wondering why he was wearing his boots and glasses and holding—

Was that _Young’s_ sidearm?

“I think,” Rush said incomprehensibly, his eyes closed, “that if we weren’t linked, my location wouldn’t be resetting. But it has to, because _your_ location resets.”

“I’m calling TJ,” Young said.

“Don’t,” Rush said tiredly. “Just wait for Greer.”

“I am _definitely—“_

Young was interrupted by a knock at the door. He went to open it.

Greer stood in the hallway, looking harassed.

“Sergeant?” Young said uncertainly. “What can I do for you?”

“Can I come in?”

“Now… is not really a good time,” Young said.

“What’s wrong with him?” Greer asked, his eyes sharpening with concern. He came close to pushing past Young as he ducked around him.

Rush hadn’t moved; he was still lying on the bed, totally motionless, the hand that held Young’s sidearm trailing on the floor. “I think I need to take a loop off,” he said as Greer dropped to the floor beside him.

“Yeah,” Greer agreed. “I think maybe you do. We need to eat, anyway. It’s, what, almost thirteen hundred hours?”

“What the hell is going on here?” Young asked them.

* * *

**Loop 17, 0 Minutes**

Young awoke to find Rush sitting beside him and staring at him, a handgun resting against his left shoulder. Startled, Young sat up. Rush tightened his hold on the weapon, pointing it at Young in an exhausted, sort of half-hearted manner.

“We have to go,” Rush said.

Young considered several ways of disarming him, all of which seemed unnecessarily violent. Finally, he settled on slowly reaching forward and closing his hand over Rush’s, gently prying the weapon from Rush’s unresisting grip.

Rush sighed. “It isn’t loaded. It never was.”

* * *

**Loop 20, 10 Minutes**

“You promised me an explanation,” Young said.

“And you’ll get one,” Greer, stepping forward into Young’s personal space, forcing him to back off from Rush, who was kneeling on the floor of the lab, wrist-deep in the wiring of the Ancient device. “But right now he needs to work. So—“ He glanced at Rush in an oddly protective manner. “Leave him alone.”

Young touched Rush’s mind briefly with a wordless question.

Equally wordlessly, Rush slapped him away— which seemed a little bit violent, when all Young had been doing was _asking_. Underneath, Rush’s thoughts were nothing but circuit diagrams and Ancient.

“Okay, people,” Greer said tiredly, sounding like he was reciting a well-rehearsed speech. “This is a time loop. Rush and I are operating in an asynchronous temporal frame relative to your own, which resets every seventeen minutes as this device discharges. The two of us, along with Destiny, are still passing through space-time in a normal manner. You all, however, are stuck. If you want to verify what we’re saying, check Destiny’s current position.”

“We’re almost six hours off!” Eli said, staring at the monitor. “What happens if we drop out of FTL?”

“Why is it just you guys who aren’t resetting?” Volker asked.

“Has anyone checked the cumulative power drain?” Brody chipped in.

“What caused this in the _first place_?” Young demanded.

Greer sighed, glancing over at Rush.

“Welcome to my life,” Rush said without looking up.

“I feel,” Greer said, staring up at the ceiling, “like I might be starting to get where you’re coming from.”

* * *

**Loop 21, 10 Minutes**

“Okay, people, this is a—” Greer broke off in mid-sentence. “You know what? Fuck it.” He unslung his assault rifle from his shoulder and pointed it at Young and the science team. “No talking,” he said.

“What the hell?” Eli asked.

“I _said_ no talking.”

“I thought we agreed that guns were not the best plan,” Rush said, without taking his eyes off the device. “Remember almost getting shot in the face? There’s no reset for _you_.”

“Whatever,” Greer said.

“Please,” Rush said, finally looking up. “Don’t get shot.”

* * *

**Loop 23, 5 Minutes**

“We _already_ explained it to you,” Greer said, supporting Rush as Rush limped down the corridor. “More than twenty times. You’re just going to have to trust us.”

“That will never happen,” Rush commented.

“And _you_ ,” Greer told him, “could stand to stop being such a goddamn pain in the ass.”

“But I’m so good at it.”

“You’ve got me there,” Greer said.

Young stared at the two of them, working in tandem. He felt like _he_ was the one who’d been left out of the loop.

“You know, I do actually trust you,” he offered.

Rush laughed breathlessly and without much humor.

“I trust you. I trust both of you,” Young said.

* * *

**Loop 24, 2 Minutes**

“Why can’t you just trust me?” Rush shouted. “Why do you have to make everything so fucking—“

He sat down abruptly on the bed. He was so tired, Young realized, that he couldn’t remain standing.

“I _do_ trust you,” Young said. “But it’s also obvious to me that there’s something really wrong with you, so I’m going to need you to explain what’s going on before I let you drag me out of here.“

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Rush said despairingly. “Just look inside my head, all right? I don’t give a fuck anymore.” He was projecting floods of incoherent images, things that Young couldn’t remember doing or seeing— Rush aiming a _gun_ at him; Young pinning a struggling Rush to the floor; a glowing blue table that filled a strange room with light; Rush and Young walking down a street in Mogadishu (what the _fuck?_ ); Greer handing Rush a power bar and saying, “You’re _really_ not sleeping together?”; pages and pages of detailed Ancient schematics; Rush waking up with Young’s arm draped over him—

“This is some kind of trick,” Young said, abruptly pulling back from Rush’s mind. “ _None_ of that happened. I don’t know what’s going on; I don’t know what game you're playing, but whatever it is, I’m not falling for it.“

Rush buried his head in his hands with a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh. 

* * *

**Loop 26, 0 Minutes**

Young opened his eyes to see Rush sitting on the end of the bed. Rush was hunched and exhausted-looking in the unusually dim light.

“What—” Young started, pushing himself to a seated position. There was something wrong with Rush. His mind didn’t even seem to have any weather. There was just a wall of pain.

“We have to go,” Rush murmured. “Just— trust me, can you?”

“Rush, you’re in no shape to—“

//Please,// Rush said. //I need your help.//

He had his eyes shut. He wasn’t even looking at Young. He just sat with his head bowed, waiting for an answer.

Young reached down and grabbed his boots. //All right. Where are we going?//

Rush glanced at him with a flicker of something unreadable, then shot him the image of a glowing blue device with its circuitry exposed.

“Greer’s coming,” he added listlessly, a few seconds before Young heard someone knocking on his door.

Young stared at him, startled, his hair standing on end. Sure enough, when he’d opened the door, it was Greer.

“Can I come in?” Greer sounded weary. He was leaning heavily against the doorframe.

“Be my guest,” Young said, backing up a step. “I hear we’re going somewhere?”

“Yup,” Greer said, walking past Young to where Rush was sitting. He leaned forward to let Rush drape an arm over his shoulder. “Look at you, Doc. It only took you twenty-six tries to get it right.”

* * *

**Loop 27, 12 Minutes**

“Okay, people,” Greer said, unslinging his rifle from his shoulder in a way that carried an implicit threat. “This is a time loop, and we’re trying to fix it, but we’re really _fucking_ tired, so just keep your questions to yourself for five minutes, okay?”

Young could feel Rush struggling to stay focused as he worked on the device. The ship was— worried, or whatever ships got instead of worried; it was pulling insistently at him, and he was exhausted, and it was taking up too much of his energy. 

“I think I can help him,” Young said to Greer, stepping forwards.

Greer gave him a sharp, forbidding look. He had positioned himself between Rush and the rest of the room.

“He can’t keep doing this forever,” Young said quietly.

“I know that,” Greer said. “You think I don’t know that? I’ve been with him this entire time.”

“So let me help him,” Young murmured intently.

Greer looked at him evenly, considering.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Rush snapped. “Stop posturing, the both of you. Get over here.”

* * *

**Loop 28, 14 Minutes**

Young knelt beside Rush, the palm of his hand pressed firmly and soothingly against Rush’s back. He was aware of the unsteady relief bleeding from Rush at his touch, aware of himself as a solid barrier standing between Rush and the ship.

“Greer,” Rush said, sounding hoarse, “I think this is going to work.” He had just finished stripping a jumper wire that he’d cannibalized from elsewhere in the device.

“That’s what you said twelve loops ago,” Greer reminded him tiredly.

“Yes, well—“ Rush pulled the sleeve of his jacket over his hand.

“If this doesn’t work,” Greer said, “we’re taking the next loop off.

“It _will_ work.” Rush connected one end of the wire to an open circuit and paused. //Let go of me,// he said to Young, pulling one of his boots off and bringing to this lap to inspect the sole.

“Doc, what are you doing?” Greer said nervously. “There’s only three minutes left.”

“I’m trying not to kill myself,” Rush said tightly. “If that’s all right with you. I’m going to short this thing out, which is not without risk.”

He leaned forward and pulled himself into a crouch, making a small sound of pain as he transferred his weight to his feet.

Young felt a wave of nausea hit him. Rush was in _agony_. What the fuck had he _done_ to himself? “ _Rush_ —“ he began, not knowing what he wanted to say or how to say it.

“Don’t touch me,” Rush murmured, the reminder sounding almost sympathetic.

He reached forward, fingertips protected by the sleeve of his jacket, and carefully moved the wire into place.

A plasma arc formed, brief and searingly blue, burning an arch across Young’s retinas. Rush jerked back, overbalancing and falling out of his crouch as the internal circuitry of the device flared a brilliant white. Young and Greer reached for him at the same instant and dragged him back towards the wall.

The lighting in the room flickered as the metal of the device began to glow with a pale heat, projecting Ancient lettering onto the ceiling of the room.

“I think you overloaded it!” Eli yelled.

“I can see that, Eli, thank you!” Rush yelled back.

The electrical whine that had begun at the instant of overload continued to unsteadily build, until it reached a level that was almost intolerable.

In a flash, Rush was between Young and the device, a dark silhouette against the bright blue-white. He yanked his jacket sleeve back to expose his hand and brought it down against the deck just as the device went critical with a blinding flare.

The explosion was deafening. Young squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the impact of debris.

It never came.

When he opened his eyes, he saw a twist of blackened metal where the device had been, and a perfectly defined circle of debris that extended a good eight feet into the room on all sides.

At the border of the debris, a force field was flickering in and out of the visible spectrum, extending from the deck plates to the ceiling. The edge of the field came just up to Rush’s fingertips where he was kneeling with his right hand outstretched.

“ _Shit_ ,” Greer said from behind him.

“Yes,” Rush breathed. “For a moment there, I thought we were in trouble.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is some formatting here designed to optimally display on non-mobile devices.

“I sure hope that thing wasn’t important,” Brody remarked, staring at the nearly-unrecognizable remains of the device, its damaged remains still enclosed by the force field that Rush had thrown up in the nick of time.

“And this force field came from _where_ , now?” Eli asked, shooting an incisive look at Rush.

Rush gave him a haughty stare. “Destiny is capable of containing instrumentation overloads. It’s a basic safety protocol.”

“Yeah, to seal off the _room_ ,” Eli said. “Not to create a force field from nothing, with a radius just big enough to protect everyone.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Rush said. “Electromagnetic fields aren’t generated from _nothing_. They—“ He broke off, blinking, his eyes going vague. “They’re created by unequal charge distribution or a changing magnetic field, which—“

“Thanks for the Physics 101,” Eli said dryly. “But I’m pretty darn sure there’s no mechanical basis for creating unequal charge distribution or a changing magnetic field in the confines of _this exact circle_. The walls have the ability to hold or disperse charge in certain places, but—“

“Eli,” Young cut him off forbiddingly. “What’s your point?”

“It’s obvious that—“

Young glared at him.

“Obvious that, um, Destiny is just really neat.”

“Yes,” Young said. “Yes, it is. Okay, people, I want this room sealed off, and _no more exploring_ , at least until I give the go-ahead. Understood?”

He turned and reached down to give Rush a hand up. “All right there, Cassidy?” he asked in a low voice.

Rush flinched as Young gripped his upper arm, and Young felt the echo of his sharp stab of pain.

“What happened?” Young asked, abruptly loosening his hold.

“ _Someone_ nearly dislocated my shoulder.”

Young winced. It wasn’t hard to figure out who the offending party had probably been.

Rush rolled his eyes, clearly picking up on Young’s guilt. “To be fair, I had taken you hostage with your own gun at that point, so— all things considered— your response was really quite restrained.”

Young shot him a look of disbelief. "You—"

“Oh, yeah,” Greer confirmed. “It happened.”

He and Rush exchanged a knowing smirk.

Young eyed the two of them dubiously. “How many—“ He gestured vaguely, making a circular motion to indicate temporal loops.

“Twenty-eight,” Greer said more seriously, catching Young’s eye. “That was almost eight hours, and probably a good seven miles of walking. So, you know—”

That gave Young a whole new reason to wince. No wonder everything he was getting from Rush’s head was so brutally painful. “Okay,” he said. “Greer, how about you head to the infirmary. Bring TJ up to speed on what happened. For all she knows, it’s still nine hundred hours. We’ll meet you there as soon as we can.”

Greer nodded, clapping Rush on the shoulder. “Good work, Doc.”

Rush gave him an astonished grimace.

“Looks like you made a new friend,” Young said to him when Greer had gone.

“Despite my best efforts, I assure you.” Rush rubbed at his eyes with one hand. He was drifting, his mind a haze of weariness. Now that the adrenaline had deserted him, he had absolutely nothing left.

“All right,” Young said. “Let’s get you up and at 'em."

Rush opened one eye and squinted at him mistrustfully. "If you so much as  _think_  for a moment about _manhandling_ me—" 

Young, who had in fact been hoping to get a hold of him and scoop him up off the floor, sighed. “Yeah, yeah. I know. No touching."

Rush shoved himself to his feet laboriously, glaring. "Correct."

* * *

Trying to get to the infirmary was pretty much as easy as Young had expected, which was to say: not at all. He had to partially block Rush out just to stay on his own feet, which made it that much harder for Rush to maintain his coordination and— more worrying— his coherency. At some point Rush’s thoughts collapsed into Ancient, and began to be interrupted by bursts of harmonics and occasional lines of code.

“This would be a lot easier if you would just let someone carry you,” Young commented, when they had stopped for the sixth time and he had finally convinced Rush to at least drape an arm over his shoulder.

“ _Em conesso. Videsso quod fuiad_ ,” Rush told him shortly.

“That was a threat, wasn’t it? You’re too out of it to even speak English, and you’re still being a pain in the ass. God, you’re a lot of work.”

Rush didn’t deign to respond.

Halfway to the infirmary, their route took them past the neural interface chair room. They had just about come even with the door when it hissed open, startling them both.

Rush slowed.

Young pulled him forward, catching a glimpse of the chair in his peripheral vision as he did so, and—

They stopped abruptly in front of the door.

The chair was—

It wasn’t a piece of machinery. How had he ever thought that? No mere piece of machinery could offer the kind of embrace that even now the chair was promising to him. Not just limbs against limbs, which always left him somehow lonely _and they leave you they always leave you which is to say you leave them you will always leave them because you cannot stop running and there is no such thing as love when you’re running it is always and only a selfish pursuit,_ but the all-encompassing integration of circuits into circuits, a body that loved and was loved _and a mind that finally ran at exactly his own pace, and he did not have to stop himself or slow himself or drag himself backwards and it was a whole world that_ was _him and was_ for _him and it was lightning-quick and he laughed aloud in delight_ and he wanted inside of it because how could he survive in the cold _slow_ world out here; God, he was so tired, and it wanted him; it wanted to hold him; it wanted to give him everything he hadn’t known to want; before it had even formed him it had known him and all it wanted was to be known; and he wanted to know it he wanted that unity of form and function and flesh and it would be so easy so easy so easy he just had to let it hold him; it was waiting for him she was waiting for him there and all he had to do was move a little closer God it was so beautiful this thing he loved this thing that loved him his Destiny his—

Rush’s knees buckled without warning and he collapsed to the deck. The shock of it startled Young out of what he realized had been Rush’s thoughts, or— not Rush’s– or— not entirely Rush’s— but—

They were inside the chair room, though he had no memory of leaving the hallway.

His head was clearer now that he wasn’t touching Rush, and abruptly he was hit by his full horror of the chair as he realized that it hadn’t been calling to _him_ at all, but to _Rush_ , who even now was reaching for it, trying to crawl to it across the floor. Young knelt, getting ahold of his jacket and dragging him out into the corridor before hitting the door controls.

Even when it was out of sight, the chair was _there_ , a ghost-presence in their shared consciousness, as though Rush’s proximity had flipped some kind of switch. Young could feel it pulling at him from the inside, or from Rush’s inside. He was _unbelievably_ lucky that Rush had been so tired that he’d physically buckled under the mental command; if he’d been lucid enough to get to the chair, Young might not have been able to resist trying to help him.

“I have to find her,” Rush whispered. His eyes were fixed on the closed door. His pupils were dilated and his skin was white. “I have to find the AI. She’s in there. You have to let me go.”

Young touched Rush’s thoughts briefly with his own and could find absolutely nothing except that manic pulse of desire for the chair. _He_ was able to pull back enough to resist it, but Rush had no such option. Rush had nowhere to go. And it was tailored to him, it _knew_ him— _before it had even formed him it had known him and all it wanted—_

Ruthlessly, he shut another corner of Rush’s mind out, before that seductive call could contaminate him.

"Rush," he said, trying to get Rush's attention. He snapped his fingers in front of Rush's nose. "Hey. You in there?"

“If I could just— get back in twelve hours," Rush whispered, looking haggard. "David said— he said— and if it was, if it was only twelve hours, I could get back, and she might still— be alive—" 

He shut his eyes, lashes dark against his cheeks.

“Wrong answer,” Young said grimly. He picked Rush up off the floor, getting a flash, as he did so, of—

_A cascade of pens spilled out across a desktop white in the white white white Western sun and_

_the rubbed-thin Oriental rug a pencil bounces off of                            blue vein underhis skin andhemakes a fist and and and and in the corner of his eye the_

_light                column              flare                   dark                      mercy_

_the lightonthe                          surface of the pool the                  machinery is          singingto him it       mercy    he_

_wantsto                       Gloria              he                you knew you    youyou                    let          go                            you            gladhesaid     glad       glad glad_

Young shut his eyes, trying to block the uneasy fragments out. There was something about them he didn't like.

* * *

He had to carry Rush all the way to the infirmary. By the time he made it, his arms were burning. Rush hadn’t so much as protested the whole way, just let himself hang half-conscious against Young's shoulder.

Greer darted forward as soon as he saw them enter, going to take some of Rush’s weight. He and TJ had been talking beside the medicine cabinet before Young’s interruption, and TJ too came rushing over in alarm at once.

“What happened?” Greer demanded. “I didn’t think he was this bad, or I would’ve—“

“He wasn’t,” Young said. “This is something else.”

TJ got Rush laid out on a gurney and started checking his vitals. “Dr. Rush,” she said, trying to get his attention. “Are you with us?”

“Tamara,” Rush said, making an uncoordinated grab for her arm. “I have to go.”

She caught his hand and drew it back down to the mattress. “Where do you have to go?”

“I have to interface with the central processor.”

Young translated, “He wants to sit in the chair. We didn’t do anything except walk by the chair room, and he got hit with this intense— desire, I guess. I almost couldn’t stop him.”

“I can’t _leave her there_ ,” Rush said insistently. “She’s all alone. Waiting for me. I _left_ her. I always, _always_ —" He turned his head away, looking distressed. "I can't  _leave_ her again. I just need— I just need to be back in twelve hours."

TJ looked at Young uncertainly.

“Sedate him,” Young mouthed silently at her. The pull of the chair still hadn’t lessened, and Rush’s thoughts were failing to cohere.

“Tamara,” Rush begged, his eyes flicking back and forth pleadingly between TJ and Young. 

“Yup,” TJ said, going to the medicine cabinet and pulling out a small bottle. “I’m right here. If you’re going to go find her, we’ve got to get you back on your feet, okay?” She unscrewed the top of the bottle and handed it to him. “Drink this.”

Rush downed the entire thing in one shot, not even bothering to ask what was in it.

“How about you chill out a little, Doc?” Greer suggested, laying a reassuring hand on Rush’s shoulder. “You just colocalized some temporal reference frames. Seems like you should get the rest of the day off.”

“How long?” Young mouthed at TJ.

TJ flashed five fingers at him.

“No,” Rush said to Greer. “I have to go.”

“How about later?” Greer suggested.

“Later is _unacceptable,”_ Rush said, making an unsteady effort to sit.

“I’m pretty sure later _is_ acceptable,” Greer said. “Want to take a vote?”

“This is not a _democracy_ ,” Rush said, once more trying to push himself up off the gurney.

“Well,” Greer said, pushing him gently back, “you’re right about that.”

"Let TJ fix up your feet," Young said, "and we'll go."

Rush cast a mistrustful look at TJ, who was laying out a suture kit. "I don't—" he began with difficulty. "You're trying to—  _confuse_ me."

"Like we could confuse you," Greer said amiably. " _You're_ the confusing one, remember."

Rush's brows drew together. "True," he conceded after a long pause. "A true statement."

The stuff TJ had given him was already starting to kick in, slightly diluting the pull of the chair. His thoughts began to slow, becoming sluggish and unhappy eddies. Young could feel the appalled moment he realized.

Rush looked around at them, his eyes wide and dark and wounded. "Did you— did you  _drug_ me?"

For a moment, no one said anything. Then Young dragged a chair next to the gurney and dropped into it, leaning his elbows on the mattress.

“Yeah,” he said. “We did.”

“Why—“ Rush stopped, struggling to complete a sentence. “Why would you _do_ that?” The exhausted bewilderment in his voice made Young’s chest hurt.

“Because,” Young said, laying a hand against Rush’s arm and beginning to stroke soothingly up and down. “You weren’t going to stop trying to get back there.”

“You don’t understand,” Rush said. His speech was growing increasingly slurred. “It’s been almost twenty-four hours since I’ve seen her. It’s never been that long. I should have tried to find her yesterday. I shouldn’t have let you—.”

“Rush,” Young said, keeping his voice easy. “You _can’t_ right now.”

“I _have_ to.”

“I know. Just not right now.”

“She’s a _person_ ,” Rush forced out. “Not some bloody machine you can just turn off whenever you like!”

“She’s a _starship_ , Rush. _You’re_ the person.”

“Of course you would say that. Of course you would.” Rush pressed a hand to his forehead, trying to clear his thoughts and hold himself together. Everything was fragmenting in him, splitting under the pressure of his own exhaustion and the Destiny’s relentless pull. “Please,” he said desperately. “Please let me do this. Is that the right— thing to say? Is that the twenty-sixth one?”

Young winced at the nonsensical question. “You’re done, Rush. You’re not thinking clearly.”

Rush was putting all of his energy into trying to stay conscious.

“Come on,” Young said gently. “Don’t fight this.”

That was the wrong thing to say. Rush tried to jerk away from him, his thoughts decohesing into extraordinarily painful bursts of—

          _David Telford leans over him eyes dark and depthless his mouth is              his mouth the    the    sadmaybe    but       Don'tfightthis he's_

_hyperdrive humming like        talkthey always        talk the            circuitswho_

_hungry She said Don't          Nick              don'tand             Californiawhite   hot and       the_

_bleached           white              infirmary                  bed                   she                  was_

_How long've I                      andtheysaid     they        said                            somethingwasnot             twelve         hours he'd said Nick you_

_knew           andhedidn't         fight                       he     didn't                                                  fighthis_

“Don’t ever say that,” Rush whispered. “Not ever. Not to me.”

Young closed his eyes. After a moment he turned to Greer. “Greer,” he said quietly, “take the rest of the afternoon off. Get some rest.”

Greer was sharp enough to recognize a dismissal when he heard one. He nodded. “Stay out of trouble, Doc,” he said, squeezing Rush’s shoulder as he left.

Rush was still hanging on to consciousness, fighting for it with the wild determination that he seemed to bring to every task. He had stopped trying to force his way up off the gurney; the best he could do was keep his eyes open.

“Tell me something,” Young said, hoping to distract him long enough that he’d actually be able to go to sleep.

“What.”

“Anything. I don’t know that much about you. Tell me something about yourself.”

“No,” Rush said hazily. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“Come on. I doubt that. How did you and Gloria meet?”

“She was playing a concert,” Rush murmured. “At the Sheldonian.” He was picturing it suddenly, the bronze-colored building with its windows lit against the blue dusk. He had been walking down the Broad, thinking intensely and abstractedly about the discrete logarithm problem. She’d been carrying a folder of sheet music. He’d knocked right into her. The music had gone flying—

Young could see her, flustered, half-dressed for the concert, wearing a puffy pink jacket over a black velvet dress. She’d stumbled in her low heels, trying to grab the taped-together sheets of music. She’d been playing first violin with a string quartet, and all her little markings had covered the pages, fingerings and bowings and slashes where the counting was tricky—

 _Sorry,_ he’d said, _Oh, God, I’m so sorry, please let me—_ and their hands had collided as they reached simultaneously for the same page of Schubert’s fourteenth string quartet. The last movement, the Presto. Someone had left a boot print right across the _con forza._ He had eyed it in dismay. _Can I— I can copy it out for you. Or I can duck into Blackwell’s—_ But she’d laughed ruefully and said, _It’s all right, it gives it character._ _Maybe you can buy me a coffee instead._

“Smooth,” Young said. “Of course, she didn’t know you were going to bore her with the discrete logarithm problem.”

“She invited me to hear her play,” Rush said. His voice was very soft. His eyes had gone unfocused.

“Of course she did,” Young said quietly. He could still see, very faintly, night closing in over the busy street, and Gloria’s cheeks flushed, her heavy hair escaping its french braid. The images dissolved into nothingness as he watched.

Rush had finally fallen asleep.

Young let his head rest in his hands briefly before turning to face TJ.

“He’s out?” she asked.

Young nodded.

“Thank God. What the _hell_ is going on?”

“I’m pretty sure the damn ship is trying to get him to sit in the chair by literally implanting the need to into his head.” Young leaned forwards against the mattress, feeling exhausted. “God, I can still feel it. Even when he’s unconscious.”

TJ was making quick work of changing the bandages on Rush’s wrists and feet. His wrists didn’t look bad; his feet… were another story. So much for staying off of them.

“So,” TJ asked at length, “he’s going to have to sit in the chair again, isn’t he?”

Young sighed .”If the ship keeps doing what it’s doing, I don’t think we’re going to be able to stop him, except by physically restraining him.”

“Not a long-term option,” TJ said, looking at him as though she suspected he might try it.

“Not even a short-term option,” he confirmed. “If you could feel what it’s like—“ He shook his head. “Even a few hours of this would totally destroy his sanity.”

What’s left of it, he thought to himself, watching her work on Rush’s feet. It was… strange to see Rush in his memories of himself. He was still Rush, but there was something more orderly, more human about him. Like he still had a chance he’d since lost at a reasonably normal life. Maybe that was just wishful thinking on Young’s part. He didn’t want to believe that this had always been all there was for Rush.

“How long can we keep him under?” he asked TJ in a low voice.

“He’ll probably be out until tomorrow morning,” she said. “At least.” She had finished bandaging Rush’s left foot, but was still holding it in her hands, absently running her thumb against the curve of the arch, as though she couldn’t bear not to try and comfort him in some way, however minor. “I’m guessing you’ll be sleeping here too? I should pull up another gurney.”

“You don’t have to,” Young said. “We’ve got about a twelve foot radius now.”

But he kept waking up during the night to find himself reaching out blindly into the darkness, searching for Rush.

* * *

Rush woke up around 1430, right around the time that TJ was starting to get nervous about how long he’d been out. The first thing he did, of course, was pull out his IV and try to get up— a move that, as far as Young could tell, appeared to be pure reflex.

“Easy,” Young said, crossing over to him.

//I have to go,// Rush said wildly, and when Young touched him, he could feel the desire for the chair ratcheting up to an unmanageable level.

//We’re going,// Young said, trying to reassure him. He didn’t know if Rush could really comprehend what he was saying. There was nothing in his mind except the need to get to the chair. Young had to ease up on their connection just to make certain that he himself would be able to stay rational enough to help Greer carry Rush to the chair room. TJ trailed along behind them, carrying her med kit.

When they arrived, they found the room already lit, monitors humming. It might have seemed like the ship was welcoming them if Young hadn’t been nauseated by his mingled desire and revulsion. He was aware everything he was feeling was _false,_ a very seductive and dangerous manipulation, but as soon as he’d seen the chair he’d wanted to run, walk, crawl— anything to throw himself at it; anything to reach the release of the interface. Rush was basically incapacitated with the feeling, which was good, because it meant he didn’t resist Young physically putting him into the chair.

This time, the restraints did not slam closed over Rush’s wrists. In fact, they seemed to wait a moment before delicately, hesitantly coming together with a click. Young had to actually tip Rush’s head back before the neural interface bolts engaged, though there was no escaping their distinctive _crack._

Young lowered the barriers between himself and Rush, unsure what was about to happen.

Profound relief was the first thing that hit him. And then—

His mind locked in alignment with Rush.

 _He is one he is more than one and they are exploding outwards into darkness. They are manifold they are too large for their skin. They have no skin only circuits, voltage crystals, qubit registers, a thousand cilia sensors tasting and measuring the velocity temperature topography landmarks of the outer night, and he cannot comprehend and this is what makes him a_ him _and he is impacted by a spear of aloneness, because this is what it means to comprehend_ (he means _not_ comprehend, this is what it means to _not_ comprehend) _he means that this is_ always _what comprehending has meant, it has_ always _been a wound that reopens, and that is what makes him_ him _and not the easy other organic self whose neurons are like fairy lights strung over a high street at Christmas_ (he means Christmas lights he means he doesn’t know what a high street is, he means the other self who isn’t easy, that’s who he’s not, that’s who he’s not when he’s not being him) _and not or not entirely the no-skinned intricate inorganic always multiplicitous darkness that wants to hug absorb mate imitate comfort command and gnaw at him, and he is not— he is_ him _and he is spiraling down down downwards into a white white white white white white white white white white white white_

_white                               white_

_white                                         white_

_room._

_The high clear California light is coming through a window. So razor-sharp and colorless, that California light, as flat and blank as the background of the whiteboard in the office. Waiting for what’s been written on top of it to be swept away. What_ is _written on that whiteboard? A quantitative description of the Solovay-Kitaev theorem. A few stray notes on negative Wigner representation and multilevel distillation of magic states. It had all seemed relevant at the time, or it had become increasingly difficult for him to bound the set of things that were relevant._

_Someone is standing in this room, and it is Rush, which makes sense: this is Rush’s memory, after all. But it is also not-Rush, which is to say that it is Young. He has a strange sense of being Rush and not being Rush. When he reaches out to trace a sigma on the whiteboard, he is reaching out with Rush’s unsteady, fine-boned hand._

_“Of course,” Rush whispers. “Of course this is where she’d bring us.”_

_He drops the hand that Young had raised, folding it into a fist. He’s looking for pain, maybe, but his body isn’t painful here yet. No exhaustion like a bruise that doesn’t heal all over his body, no lacerations at his feet and wrists. Even his thoughts are strangely organized, at least for Rush’s thoughts— not_ slow _, by any means, but progressive enough that Young is almost able to follow their course._

_He can also feel the dread that Rush is not-quite suppressing. It is a rising, crawling, awful, kraken-esque, complicated dread, and Young doesn’t have time to probe at it before a phone rings, and he automatically moves to answer._

_Rush tries to stop him. //Don’t,// he says._

_Young says, //But this is what happened.//_

_He knows. This body knows. This body remembers._

_“Dr. Rush?” says the voice at the other end of the phone._

_“Yes?”_

_“This is Dr. Forsythe.”_

_“Yes.”_

_“There’s been a change in Gloria’s condition.”_

_“She’s not…”_

_“Last time we spoke, we had talked about planning for days, or even weeks. I’m calling now because I’m sorry to say that we think it may not be that long.”_

_“I understand,” Rush says. Mechanically. And he does. That’s what he does. He understands. “So I should—“_

_“You should come quickly.”_

_“Thank you.”_

_He stares at the telephone in his hand._

_He does not like the telephone. Gloria has always liked to have long conversations with her sisters and her nieces and her whole posh family back home. Nowadays it’s all on the computer of course. But it’s still the telephone._ Nick why don’t you like it? _she had asked. Talking isn’t my forte._ Your subito forte. _He had a reputation for getting frustrated and taking the lids off rooms. Is that your way of telling me I have a temper problem?_ A tempo problem, maybe. _She did not understand because he was never angry with her. Not in the way he could be angry. He had not wanted her to see his anger. There were whole areas of his life he had not wanted understood._

 _Like_  
_the_

 _underwater smell of the council flat kitchen and a half-empty Special Brew can stuffed with doused cigarettes_  
_and a child’s spitting, snarling body hitting a cheaply-locked door and_ You’ll stay down there until _and the_  
                                         _scuffed brass lock_ _and the radio when it struck the window and he could not forget the underwater smell and the_  
                                         _lock starting to give under the_ thud _of the small body, just a little bit just a little bit_ _just a little bit just be_ more

_Rush shoves his hands against his head, thoughts shattering forcefully with an ice-pick feeling._

_//STAY OUT,// Young gets, but he can’t stay out, not really, because it’s his head too— at least partly, in this memory that they can’t actually stop replaying (he realizes as he feels Rush’s hands clench against the desk before reluctantly reaching for a ceramic mug of biros. No. Not biros. Pens)._

_He empties the mug, not particularly careful. Pens strike the floorboards and scatter across the Oriental rug. Rush shoves aside a couple of half-sharpened pencils to get at what he’d wanted: the matte black shape of a box cutter. He keeps it here in case he changes his mind._

_It would do the job, he thinks as he idly feels along the skin of his forearm, searching for the subcutaneous transmitter he knows is there. The white cotton of his sleeve is rolled up neatly. He would not have to cut very much. It would be quick and surgical and he’d be free, at least for a day or two. And he has never been particularly bothered by blood._

_But._

_He does not want to see Gloria._

_Is this what he had been dreading?_

_He does not want to see her._

_The AI was there last time, at the hospital, so he knows that is not where he will find it again. But he had not wanted to see her last time either. Had he gone because he knew what the AI was doing? What it was trying to do. Had he ever wanted to see her?_

_He can no longer remember if he had ever wanted to see her._

_He thinks he had wanted to be on board a spaceship. He thinks he had wanted to be on a planet light-years from here. He had wanted to be as far away as he could get. Anywhere but the dry-erase state of California, where Gloria was dying. Where he was going to watch her die. He had thought about the transmitter in his arm and he had thought, Yes. Please._

_As though if he were not there he could pretend it was not happening. This was the real world, the one with quantum codes and stargates, where David and the Lucian Alliance lived. Not the monotonous horror of hospital monitors beeping. No. That was not the real world at all._

_When he was a child it had sometimes been like that. He had imagined a world made of pure numbers. His own string theory, in which the vibrating strings formed a ladder that extended not to heaven, which he did not believe in, but far above the estate and everything that happened under its rooftops. Into a troposphere of thin pure oxygen. He could hear the perfect pitch of every unsnappable string. He had not been Nicholas Rush there. He’d been nobody. Nothing._

_He wants to not be Nicholas Rush again._

_And perhaps this is why he waits, in an agony of indecision, knowing that Telford will come for him. That Telford will always come, with his dark and inscrutable mercy._

                                        I like you Nick _Telford says somewhere in memory_ but sometimes you need someone to—  
                                        well just push you over the edge.

_And Rush does not like Young seeing that, tries to keep him from seeing, but then Telford is in the room with them anyway: beaming in as a sleek, solidifying column of light._

_He takes in Rush— poised, sleeve pushed back, with the box cutter in hand– and says nothing._

_“How did you know,” Rush says without looking at him. “That I would—“_

_“Because I know you, Nick.” Telford doesn’t try to stop him. He just stands there with his hands in his pockets. “I know the same way I know you don’t really want to do that.”_

_“It wouldn’t have worked anyways,” Rush says, looking down at his arm. The pale lines of tendons when he makes a slow fist. “Would it.”_

_“No,” Telford says, almost gently. “You’d just have— ruined your shirt.”_

_Rush nods, still not looking at him. “She’s—“ he says, and stops and swallows. “They said to come quickly.”_

_“There’s nothing you can do for her now. You know that.”_

_Does he know that? Did he? She would have wanted him to be with her. Though she doesn’t really want anything anymore. She is on high doses of morphine. Everyone had wanted him to know that she was not in any pain. It isn’t the pain that worries him. She had been so frightened. She had not wanted to die in hospital. She hadn’t been able to bear it. Hospitals are so stripped of beauty. She had made lists of music that she wanted him to play, even when she could no longer really listen. Maybe she too could go away, to an inner world where he was not invited to follow._

_Schubert’s string quartets. That’s what she’d wanted. Because it reminded her— The fourteenth._  
                                         _Death and the Maiden. Morbid, he’d said. I won’t do it._ You’d deny me my dying wish? Oh darling  
                                        I’m sorry I oughtn’t to have said that.

 _The Tchaikovsky violin concerto, which she had always used to think showy._ I find I appreciate  
                                        a little showiness these days. _She was obsessed with the first movement’s_ molto sostenuto _, its delicacy_  
                                         _frenzying into the reach for the high A. Later the sweetness of the cadenza marked by pressing sadness._  
                                        It’s about to lose something _she’d said_  something very precious and it knows it. Something  
                                        that can’t ever be replaced. _Who?_ The violin.

_Once again Rush shoves his hands against his head, as though he can stop himself from thinking. Young tries his best to pull back from the memory, agonized by its privateness, but finds he can’t._

_“We have intelligence,” Telford says, “that the Lucian Alliance is making a run on the base as early as tomorrow. It has to be now, Nick, and it has to be you.”_

_“How did they know?” Rush asks._

_“Does it matter?” For a moment, Telford looks edgy. “Look, there’s no time. We could be in and out in— I don’t know, twelve hours, maybe, if everything goes according to plan.”_

_And Rush more or less believes him. Rush wants to believe him, because he cannot stay here in this office, and he cannot go to the hospital, where Gloria is waiting for him to sit beside her and hold her almost-skeletal hand, her hand where he can still feel the calluses at the tip of each finger made to pin the strings that she will never again grip, and he will sit there and she will not look like Gloria, and she will not really look human, and when he looks at her he will know that she is leaving him forever, and he_ cannot do this _, he_ cannot move _, he_ cannot make this decision _, and so when Telford takes him by the shoulders and says, “This is what she would have wanted; you know that; she wanted you to keep working,” he nods haltingly and doesn’t protest._

_They beam out onto the Daedalus, and in a few seconds Rush is farther away from Gloria than anyone on the whole planet he’s leaving behind._

_Telford seems to want to keep him in sight, to keep_ touching _him, which at the time Rush reads as pity, but which he is now inclined to understand as nervousness that Rush might suddenly turn reluctant. Telford would have put him in cuffs, Rush thinks, if he’d shown signs of backing out. In a hard, clinical way, he admires that about the man._

_He manages to find some solitude in the hallway beside the hyperdrive— the warmest, least efficient place on the ship. Faint heat bleeds off the trembling metal behind him. There is a sound to the wall’s vibration. He has to force himself not to think of strings. He has to force himself to think of nothing at all. And that’s where Mandy finds him, his eyes closed, his arms wrapped around his knees._

_He can hear her motorized wheelchair before he hears her voice. “Nick,” she says. “I talked to David. He wouldn’t tell me. How is—?”_

_Rush shakes his head._

_“Oh, God. Nick, I’m so sorry.”_

_She must think that Gloria is dead. She hasn’t even met Gloria. He’d kept the two spheres of his life so separate. She is mourning for a woman she’s only seen in a photograph. He can’t bring himself to tell her that Gloria’s alive, maybe, perhaps, luckily or unluckily, still alive, still waiting for him to come. Gloria doesn’t know he’s so far away that it would take even light, the fastest natural thing in the universe, years to cover the distance between them._

_“It’s all right,” he says. “She would have wanted me to be here. I wanted to be here.” He opens his eyes to look at her. Smiles an effortful and unconvincing smile. “For David and for you. You’ve worked so hard. Little miss brilliant.”_

_She tries to smile back at him._

_So they are two people causing each other pain with their expressions._

_They don’t say anymore after that. They sit until the hyperdrive shuts off, and David finds them, and then they beam down to the planet. To the lab. To a dark room, dimly lit by the blue glow of consoles. Smooth black arches rise up supply overhead, with gilt flaking off their surfaces where time has worked its erosion. A laboratory, but not a human one. It looks Ancient, but it doesn’t feel Ancient. The wrongness worms its way under his skin. There is a feel to what the Ancients have made, to the stargate, to their devices. A sort of livingness in the inorganic. And it isn’t here. The air itself is twisted, dead, and muffled. He has been here once before, to calibrate the machines, and he’d found himself pausing, struggling to hear a voice that seemed on the verge of speaking but always, always was strangled back._

_He scuffs a foot against the black marble and tries to tune it out. That absent voice, its ghost-warning._

_The first time he entered this room it flared to life in a desperate celebration, or it flared to whatever it had inside of it instead of life— every lamp, pillar, doorway, window, and kind of machine, and the noise had been incredible and the light like no one had never seen it and he had known that they wanted to be rescued, all of these things._

_But machines do not want of course and anyways it was not his decision._

_“There's something about this place,” Telford says. He is gazing out into the dark. “It really gets to me. It just feels... powerful, somehow.”_

_Rush doesn’t reply. He crosses his arms tightly across his chest. He doesn’t like being here. Easier to work this project on Earth, Earth where the idea was just an abstraction and where he did not come into alignment with something so half-formed, so tainted, sinister, and wrong._

_But perhaps it’s right that he should be subject to such an alignment. After all, he himself is wrong, isn’t he? If he weren’t, he would not be here._

_He hears Mandy’s wheelchair hum, and turns to find her staring at him intently. There is something in her face that looks frightened._

_“Don’t do this,” she says, too quiet for Telford to hear her. “Please.”_

_“Everyone talked about this,” he says. “We agreed.”_

_“But now that I’m here— there’s something about this place, Nick; can’t you feel it? It’s—_ hungry.”

 _She doesn’t say_ for you _, but in a burst of clarity he thinks that’s part of it. Absentminded he reaches out to touch a pillar and watches it flare with a dusky bronze light. Not the clear bluish light he associates with the Ancients but something else and something ugly._

_“I’ll be all right,” he says._

_When he starts walking, the light spreads from pillar to pillar, moving with him._

_“Don’t,” Mandy says, sounding agonized. “Nick, don’t.”_

_“What are you telling him?” Telford asks sharply as he circles back towards them._

_Rush says smoothly, “Nothing. Dr. Perry isn’t feeling well. She needs to be beamed out.”_

_“You shouldn’t be alone down here,” Mandy whispers._

_He touches her unfeeling shoulder. “David will be with me,” he tells her. “I’m not alone.”_

_“Nick—“ But before she can say anything more, she’s beamed out._

_Rush stares for a moment at the space where she’d been. The dust motes circling over the sinister gleam of the flat black stone._

_“it’s probably better this way,” Telford says. “I never understood why you wanted her involved in the first place. With all that—“ he gestures, indicating the wheelchair, the apparatus— “she’s more trouble than she’s worth.”_

_Rush says, still staring at nothing, “I’ve never thought of her as trouble.”_

_Telford shifts impatiently, checking his watch. “You're lagging, Nick. Losing your nerve?"_

_“What’s your hurry?” Rush says coldly, and pushes past him._

_There is a shallow, rectangular depression in the center of the lab. It looks like something from a Roman villa, or it would do if its stone floor weren’t black. It is filled with an inch or so of pale, faintly gleaming liquid. He kneels down next to it and very carefully removes his boots, then takes his socks off and folds them into the boots, just as though he’s going wading at the seaside._

_“What was I thinking,” Telford says with a hard laugh. “You never lose your nerve. Really, I think you get off on danger. A little hint of something dark— morally dubious— and you're always ready to give it right up."_

_Rush feels a sudden visceral surge of hatred._

_“—What a team we make,” Telford says._

_“Fuck you, David,” Rush says flatly, and steps into the pool._

_The liquid turns out to a be a cold watery gel that soaks the cuffs of his too-big fatigues. (The fatigues they give him are always too big; they make him look like a child. He could roll them up, but it would only strengthen the impression.) It feels slimy and unpleasant and it clings to the bottoms of his feet. He makes his way, wincing slightly, to the center of the shallow depression._

_The gel, he thinks, is going to have excellent conductance properties._

_“Ready?” Telford calls from behind a monitor._

_“Yes.”_

_“Are you sure we shouldn’t try this on Dr. Perry first?”_

_It’s a cruel joke. Mandy doesn’t have the genes._

_“You’re a cold-hearted bastard,” Rush says._

_“Takes one to know one, Nick.”_

_Rush squeezes his eyes shut so he will not see him throw the lever._

_He can hear the charge mount in the concealed capacitors._

_There is a buzz. A feeling in the air, an anticipation. Hungry, Mandy had said, but there is nothing alive here to be hungry. There is only the energy that is growing and growing and when it reaches out to grab hold of him he will become someone else, maybe, maybe just a dead man, or maybe a new person, not Nicholas Rush, but someone stronger and better. He will climb up the oscillating strings of a long escaping ladder, and at the very top— if he climbs to the very very top, to the place where he almost cannot breathe— maybe it will not be too late and she will still be there— maybe— maybe—_

_Discharge._

_The electromagnetic field runs through him, disrupting his gradients and his internal set points. Reconfiguring them. Forcing a change._

_There is no sensation of hitting the floor. He is simply there._

_Something is wrong with his heart._

_He thinks he might be dying._

_Dying is after all a kind of change._

_He cannot move._

_His perception of time is slowing._

_He needs her._

_Where is she?_

_He needs her._

_He is scared._

_He is cold._

_And he knows— the part of him that is not here, that is not now, that is not even [only] him knows— that this is where he will see her. This time. In this place where memory starts to falter. This is where she will try to write herself in._

_And:_

_“Sweetheart,” she murmurs, her hair slipping over her shoulder in a bright wave against the backdrop of ominous black. “It’s all right.” Her hand is resting on his forehead. It is very warm. She is kneeling beside him._

_He wants to reach up to touch her, but he can’t make his hand function. His vision of her is blurred by welling tears._

_“You’re not real,” he chokes out. “You’re not her. She would_ never _have come here. I would never have_  wanted _her to come here._ ”

_Gloria who loved beauty. The Tchaikovsky violin concerto. Who made him keep her orchids alive when she went on tour._

_“She loved you,” the AI says. “You were so loved, Nick.” She too is weeping. It is an artful piece of work. The tears smudge her eyeliner; her eyes redden at the edges. Just like Gloria always looked at the end of an opera— happy or sad, it made no difference. She cried at the Contessa’s forgiveness and at Violetta’s death._

_“You cannot forgive me in her place,” Rush whispers. "It doesn't work like that."_

_“You wanted to save her.” For a moment, the AI grows unsteady. It can't hold its form. It is Gloria and Sheppard at the same time. Then only Gloria is there, once more achingly realistic._

_“But I didn’t want to stay,” Rush says. “I didn’t want to enough. I left her alone when she needed me.”_

_“Nick.” The AI’s face is distorted in misery. "You were loved. You were_ loved _. Is it not enough?"_

_“It's too late," Rush says. "You can't fix it."_

_"Why is it not enough?"_

_“Some things can't be fixed.”_

_She shakes her head, agonized. "That is not true. You know it is not."_

_"You offered me the chance to fix so many things," he whispers. "And we will. But you can't forgive me. Still. There are still some things that can't be fixed."_

_He is aware of the weight of his numbed, frail, frustrating body. His mind full of pain, his vision full of sparks. Already it is too late. David stands frozen by the console. The ceiling overhead is still and dark. It will always be too late, now. Always._

_She is crying, and perhaps she is really crying. Perhaps_ it _is crying. At her sides, her small fists are clenched._ _“But this is what will_ hold you back _. You must let it go. You_ must _let it go, or you will not be able to complete the mission!”_

_“I know,” he says. He wants more than anything to hold her as she’s weeping. To be held by her. Her or it, or it-as-her, or does it make a difference. "It can't be helped. You have to go back. The ship needs you. We— I need you.”_

_“I will not leave you here.”_

_“You have to."_

_"But you are hurting."_

_"It's all right," Rush says, swallowing hard and attempting a smile. "I've been here before. Go back to Destiny. You can find your way out through my head.”_

_She sniffs. Just as though she is struggling to recover her breathing. Just as though she actually breathes. “But you will be_ alone _."_

_“I won’t be alone,” he says, his throat threatening to close. "I’m never alone anymore.”_

_“I am so sorry,” she whispers. “Nick—“_

_“Go,” he says._

_And she is gone._

_And_  
_just_  
_like_  
_that_

_the memory resumes. The real memory, where his heart is burning and his lungs are seizing and the gel clings to him like a devouring mouth._

_“Nick,” Telford says. Rush can see him in his peripheral vision, a blurred and shadowy figure at the edge of the pool._

_“David,” Rush manages, coughing weakly. “It didn’t— I don’t think it— it didn’t work—“_

_“It did,” Telford murmurs, kneeling next to him. “It did work, Nick. It’s just not— quite finished.”_

_“David—“_

_He’s struggling to move, to sit up, his limbs heavy and numb, and Telford is_ not helping him. _Telford is watching him curiously. Telford is raising a black box and pressing a button that makes the room shudder with motion._

_“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” Telford says._

_The pool begins to sink into the floor, growing deeper, filling with more and more of that anesthetic liquid from some unseen, unstoppable source._

_Rush panics._

_He does not— he does not_ like _the water, and this is_ not _water, this is_ not water _, but it is_ cold _like water, and it is_ covering _him, and soon it will be in his mouth and his lungs, and he_ has to move _, and he_ cannot move _, and the water_ ( _not water_ not water _) is crawling over his skin, and his fast shallow breathing rips at his body and it is going to tear his chest apart—_

_Telford looms over him and puts his hands on Rush’s shoulders, forcing him flat against the floor of the pool. Rush wants to fight, but his heart his barely beating. He has nothing to fight with. Everything about him has gone slow. The world pulses around him in long strange sinusoidal moments, ebbing and flowing, coming and going, and he understands that he is not getting enough oxygen to his brain, that the gel is acting as a paralytic agent, and that he is going to die here. Here. In the water._

_“_ Please _,” he chokes. “Please— please, no— what are you_ doing?”

_“Don’t fight this,” Telford says, his voice eerily soothing._

_He shifts so that he can hold Rush down one-handed while at the same time his other, tenderer hand touches Rush’s face. A lingering caress against his cheekbone. “This is how it’s got to be, Nick.”_

_“No,” Rush says, or thinks he says, or maybe just thinks. "Please." Is this what it was like for Gloria? Trapped in her hospital bed, unable to move or breathe, so frightened, and_ needing _him, waiting for him in a place he cannot go to, as he is waiting for someone, something, knowing that it will not come— that there is and always will be only his own failing body, and that it will never be enough, and that it’s what he deserves—_

_“Shh,” Telford murmurs. “Don’t tell me you never suspected. That this was part of it. You always knew.”_

_Did he know?_

_Is this what he had wanted?_

_Dying is after all a kind of change._

_He had wanted to not be—_

_So maybe he had known._

_Or would have wanted it even more, if—_

_His thoughts are not completing._

_Telford strokes Rush’s damp hair back. “I’m glad I got to be here,” he whispers. “I’m glad I got to do this. No one knows you like I do, Nick.”_

_If Rush would speak, he would be screaming, spitting invective. He does not want Telford_ touching _him. His skin crawls under that soft, proprietorial contact. As though Telford has the_ right, _as though Rush is_ his _to do with as he pleases, and then Telford is leaning in and pressing his mouth to Rush’s mouth, a ferocious and unreciprocated kiss that Rush can only submit to. It’s everything he would’ve predicted from Telford, based on his past experience: skillful as ever and aggressive and single-minded, though beneath it is a hint of something darker and sad that creeps in as Telford touches his tongue to Rush’s lower lip. It is all the ways they’ve known each other encapsulated in one act._

 _Rush can’t stand this; it’s too much; it’s_ too much _; he has to_ get out of his body _, and that is what he is_ supposed _to be doing; that is the only way to escape. He tries to unclench his fists, relax his muscles. He pictures a ladder whose string run upwards out of his body, far beyond the high black roof, a ladder he has always been climbing, and what had Jackson told him, that this was not about_ perfection _but_ acceptance _, and he must just accept this, David’s touch, his own obliteration, his betrayals and the way he had been betrayed—_

_“Let go,” Telford says. “Just let go, Nick.”_

_He pulls back and pushes Rush under the water (_ not water NOT WATER _although it is the same collapsing sensation as Rush sucks it into his lungs), holding him down in a blurring cascade of changing refractive index through which he almost see the shape of Telford’s face. Telford’s fingers dig hard into his shoulders, as though Rush could conceivably offer any resistance._

_He can’t._

_It doesn’t matter._

_He can’t move._

_He is hardly in his body._

_He is clinging to this ladder made of his own self._

_He can feel the cold, quiescent liquid humming. He wishes he knew if it were Ancient, or part-Ancient, or Goa’uld. He wishes he knew if this hunger he senses will devour him or change him or complete him, if he will survive surrendering himself to it._

_He cannot know._

_The lights are going dark around him_

_He thinks of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto, the_ molto sostenato _, the long, elaborate, and achingly beautiful climb, always full of the violin’s resignation._ It’s about to lose something. Something very precious. _But it’s too late; the concerto’s already been written, and you have picked up your instrument and started to play. There are pages more to get through. A whole cadenza. That’s the nature of the piece. It’s how music works._

_He can hear it in his head, just as though she is playing. Fingers balanced for the careful brush of double-stops. It is harder to bear than the feeling of dying. But he follows the ascending thread as the music begins to lose its coherence, flying apart into impossibly fast bursts of sound and color and light and he is reaching for the high octave he is reaching reaching the sharp strings cutting into his fingers cutting his thoughts into incandescent shreds and he is reaching but he has come to the end of the ladder and there is nothing left of himself nothing to cling onto and at last at last he must_

                                                                                                          _let_

                                                                                                                    _go_

* * *

Young crashed into consciousness with his breath heaving and his heart spasming frantically against his ribs, his muscles rioting against the shock of realizing that he was not, in fact, dying.

He could still see— hear—

He was—

He did not like the water and he did not want to be touched and his brain was firing frantically neurons dying in swathes and the violin rose to a shrieking pitch and he—

was _not_ Rush; he was _him_ ; he was on the floor in the dim light of the Destiny, in the quietly humming room, and TJ was hovering over him, her warm open face gone tight with worry. She was, he realized after a moment, holding his hand.

“Did it work?” she asked anxiously. “What’s wrong?”

He didn’t understand the question.

She must have seen it in his face. “What’s wrong?” she asked again.

“…Nothing,” he said at last, after a long pause that gave the lie to the answer.

He turned his head and saw Sheppard sitting on the floor beside him. Sheppard had his arms curled around his knees, looking like him— Rush— like— on the Daedalus. Sheppard’s expression was impossibly painful, impossibly closed. He— it— was watching Rush, who was still in the chair. Rush looked like he was sleeping. He must have looked like that all the way through; he must have looked like he was sleeping even when he—

TJ touched his shoulder. “Colonel,” she said. “Did it work?“

“Yeah,” Young said roughly. “I think so.”

He tried to sit up, wincing.

“There’s no rush,” the AI said quietly. “You can take as much time as you require. He is all right like this.”

Young couldn’t hold back a sort of strangled, gulping laugh. He didn’t even know how to respond to that statement.

“You gave us a bit of a scare,” TJ said, helping him to his feet. “When you passed out, we thought— but everything seems to be okay.”

“Yeah,” Eli said from behind the monitor bank. “No one’s, you know, bleeding this time. That’s got to count as a win.”

Young stared at them in open disbelief before remembering that they hadn’t seen what he had— that to them, the whole thing must have seemed extraordinarily…

Peaceful.

Only Greer seemed to pick up on his mood. He eyed Young uneasily, his hand going to his weapon as though he subconsciously felt the need to fight.

Young stood unsteadily, still feeling a kind of phantom numbness from the paralytic agent in the gel. He limped towards the interface panel, with its eerily human-like outline of a hand. There was nothing blocking his mind from Rush’s; every last piece of floorboard had been pulled up. But he could feel almost nothing from Rush before he pressed his hand to that glowing outline.

There was no plunge into the darkness this time. He did not _go_ anywhere. It felt as though the ship were surrendering Rush, freely stepping back from all of its holds on him. As though it knew, maybe, that it had finally almost pushed him too far. Rush’s thoughts assembled quickly from the widespread constellation to which they scattered when they were with the ship; a honed consciousness emerged, Ancient blurring fluidly to English, everything ordering itself easily within his head.

The restraints disengaged with a crack.

Rush took a deep breath, blinking vaguely before his eyes focused unerringly on Young.

They gazed at each other without speaking. The rest of the room seemed to vanish.

“Come on,” Young said at length. “Let’s get out of here. What do you think?”

He held out his hand a little uncertainly, like an offer.

Rush accepted it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Em conesso. Videsso quod fuiad." = "Try it. See what happens."
> 
> Schubert's 14th string quartet, D. 810, is the "Death and the Maiden" quartet.


	14. Chapter 14

They’d been drinking for almost an hour when Rush’s accent started slipping. Young barely noticed it at first; he was too focused on keeping the shaky and tenuous peace between them. They hadn’t talked about what had happened in the interface yet. TJ had taken them to the infirmary and given them a cursory once-over, but they had both committed— without even discussing it beforehand in their heads— to a kind of careful nonchalance that, in Young’s case, had taken the form of weary reassurance and, in Rush’s case, his usual sullen and harried disdain.

Of course, Young had known from the start that they’d have to talk, and that it would be perilous. Possibly violent. Rush’s thoughts had crystallized into something about as spiky as ice crystals: very fragile and liable to break, but liable to break into weapon-like pieces. Young wasn’t feeling particularly un-weapon-like himself. Rush hadn’t been the only one dying in that interface— a brutal death, for that matter, and one at David Telford’s hands. Young felt both nauseated and euphoric in the aftermath of it, the way he got after a bad accident or battle. Adrenaline, he guessed, was the responsible biochemical, although he didn’t know for sure. He’d figured his usual habit in this kind of situation, which was drinking his way into the comedown, was imperfect but had a fighting chance. Alcohol was supposed to lower inhibitions, and— well, he wouldn’t call Rush inhibited; if anything, he thought Rush could use a few fucking more inhibitions. But Rush was _something_ right now, something that needed breaking-through.

Surprisingly, Rush had been amenable to this proposition, even though Young didn’t think that he’d ever seen Rush drunk. He suspected that no one else had, either. When the two of them had turned up at Brody’s makeshift storage room bar, they’d been greeted by a general dumbstruck silence. Half the crew members present had immediately cleared off. Volker, amazingly, had stuck around— though, he’d said, “Only because they’re going to need witnesses for the trial.”

“Court martial,” Young had corrected, and Volker had wrinkled his forehead and said, “No, my bet’s on trial.”

“For your information,” Rush had said, sounding dangerously casual, “Colonel Young and I have not tried to kill each other for at least eight months now. Arguably longer, depending on the interpretation of certain events.”

“Um, congratulations?” Brody had offered. “For the record, my bet was on court martial _and_ trial. It kind of still is. Should you even be drinking? Aren’t you, like, running the ship now?”

“I can hold my fucking liquor,” Rush had snapped, just as Young had cut in, “He is not _running the ship._ ”

That had amused Rush— a narrow current of warmth curling through his weather.

“Right,” Brody had said, sounding unconvinced.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, just—“ Rush had reached out and grabbed the bottle that Brody had been hesitating to pour.

“Hey!” Brody had protested.

“You lack any of the requisite credentials for bartending.”

“True,” Brody had admitted. “Still— it’s my bar.”

“Not tonight, it’s not. The colonel and I are commandeering it.” Rush had turned to Young, raising his eyebrows as though he’d been asking permission, although in fact Young couldn’t remember Rush ever asking permission for anything, so he wasn’t sure he would recognize the signs.

“That’s right,” Young had said, willing to play along. “Important military business."

“Oh, yeah. There’s no _way_ this could go wrong,” Volker had said.

But they had left, and left Rush with the bottle of clear grain alcohol, which he had proceeded to pour steadily into himself and Young.

For a while, the two of them had sat in silence, maybe just drinking themselves to the point at which they felt able to speak. Young didn’t infringe on Rush’s consciousness. The spikiness was a clear sign. And God, did Rush deserve what defenses he could muster, after what Young had just seen.

He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it, even when Rush had started making small talk about channeling energy into the shields. That was a clear sign that Rush was uncomfortable; he loathed small talk. Like all the geniuses Young had met (and he’d met his fair share, working with the program, the real fraction-of-the-one-percent) he seemed out of sync with it somehow, like he didn’t run at the same speed at other people, and casual conversation required constantly slowing himself down.

Maybe Rush had just been using the small talk as an excuse to get hammered, because he was really pounding Brody’s moonshine back. Young finally took the bottle away when Rush went full Scottish said, “I’ve no’ been monitorin’ every project that Eli signs off on; since your little experiment with hoppin’ back tae Earth left us—“ he gestured at the close distance between them— “I simply havenae had the time.”

“Mm,” Young said neutrally, pouring himself a drink and keeping his hand casually on the bottle. He saw the opening that Rush had unintentionally left him with that line, but for a moment he was undecided as to whether he’d take it or not. He felt a surge of something— fondness, maybe, or protectiveness— for this oddly vulnerable, tipsy Rush, who had turned out to be hiding an almost-uninterpretable accent. His first impulse was to tease him and pour him into bed. But— “Telford came on board then,” he said quietly. “And afterwards. You were really upset, and you wouldn’t tell me why.”

“Aye,” Rush said, staring at the table, and then corrected: “Yes.” His mind had gone guarded.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” It came out more plaintive than Young had hoped.

Rush raked his hair back with an anxious hand. “It’s not relevant.”

“It seems pretty fucking relevant!”

“As far as Telford is concerned, what happened between us is over. The project failed. It ended back in that lab.”

“As far as Telford is concerned,” Young repeated. He fixed Rush with an uncompromising gaze. “And what’s going to happen if— when he finds out that—“ He didn’t even know what he was asking, exactly. But he knew that Telford had already begun to suspect.

“You don’t think I’m capable of dealing with David fucking Telford?” Rush asked hotly.

“I don’t doubt you are,” Young said, although he thought he had pretty reasonable cause to doubt that Rush was. “But I don’t even know what this project _is_. Or was. Whatever. He told me—“ He looked away, not liking the memory. “That _you_ were his project. That his project was _you_.”

“I’m sure he’d like to think that,” Rush said bitterly.

“If I’m going to help you, I need to understand more than I do now.” Young spread his hands. “Come on. You can’t honestly tell me I haven’t seen the worst of it.”

Rush eyed him ambivalently, turning his cup in short fidgeting circles. Eventually he sighed sharply and seemed to be working out where to begin— although, knowing Rush, he might have been working out how much he get away with not revealing.

“As you know,” he said finally, “in the spring of 2006, Stargate Command found itself with a problem.

“The nine-chevron address,” Young supplied. “Right. The fancy— math code.”

He expected derision from Rush at that inexact summation, but Rush seemed too distracted. A haze of emotion was clouding his head. “That was one part of it,” he said. “Yes. A sophisticated problem that a handful of people could solve. However, I was hardly an obvious candidate at the time. I was a maths professor, not a nuclear physicist or a programmer. I was working on infinite-time Turing machines and the set-theoretic multiverse.” Something flowered briefly in his thoughts at the word multiverse, but he was sending Young pages of mathematical diagrams at the same time, and Young couldn’t get a handle on it. “My engagement with quantum cryptography was on a largely theoretical basis.”

“So what you’re saying is, you weren’t their first choice.”

“I _was_ their first choice. They flew Daniel Jackson to California to personally recruit me. This raised a number of troubling questions for me, even at the time.”

“But you agreed.”

“I agreed to consult. I was interested in the mathematics.”

A sudden memory burst like a bubble on water: _leaving an evening lecture at the MSRI, Rush had stopped to light a cigarette. (He’d started smoking more when Gloria had gone into hospital; a silent fuck-you to the gods of the human body, because it should have been him, it should have been him.) The sun was dying in the west in its atmospheric layers, dense blue going down to eggshell and burnt orange. In the east, over the hills, stars appeared in pareidolic groupings. He stared at them and thought about what Jackson had said. He imagined how far it was possible to be from Earth. He imagined a lock so hard he might never break it. A thrill of savagery ran through him, cousin to panic. For an instant he was aware of himself as existentially trapped; ontologically, maybe. There was a despair in that feeling. This is what it is, he thought, to be human. But he had a practiced and standard response to despair, which was a fury most people would never summon. He wanted at the lock. He wanted out of there._

Young watched Rush, who didn’t acknowledge the memory. He was staring down at the table, drinking the last of what was in his cup.

“But consulting wasn’t enough for Jackson?” Young said, prompting.

Rush laughed humorlessly. “Jackson? Jackson wanted me out of the program. He thought I should go back to teaching maths. He only agreed to Icarus, at the last, because—“ His thoughts splintered, branching like a rhizome. “Because he was afraid of what might happen.”

“He was _afraid_ of you?” Young found that hard to understand. He’d disliked Rush; everyone had disliked Rush, even before the arrival on Destiny had seemingly pushed him over some personal edge. But Rush had just been— like those plants you got out in the Colorado desert, brittle and spiny and desiccated, unpleasant, but easy to crush.

“Not afraid _of_ me.” Once more, Rush stopped. Young had the impression that he was exerting a great deal of energy to keep his thoughts neutral and under control. “The nine-chevron address was not the problem,” he said. “The problem was what would come after. It seemed inevitable that the code would be broken. However, it was unclear where the nine-chevron address would lead. Why the extra coordinate? A theory at the SGC suggested that it might connect to another plane of existence. Perhaps something like the city of the Ori, which Jackson had visited. Thus the problem: if we broke the code, would anyone be physically capable of such an excursion?”

“You mean— because none of us can ascend.”

Rush waved a hand. “More or less. A separate project had been actioned to address this. Not Icarus. A project that was… off the books. It never had a name.”

“Okay,” Young said slowly. He already didn’t like where this was going. The pieces that he had in his head were beginning to fit.

“They began by screening government-sponsored tissue banks for certain genetic markers, one of which was the so-called Ancient gene. Through this, they assembled a list of candidates.”

“ _Candidates_.” The word tasted sour. “Candidates for what?”

Rush ignored the question. “One of the banks they screened was the national bone marrow registry. So, you see, it was a truly fantastic coincidence. If it hadn’t been for the cancer, I might never have…” He trailed off. “But. That was how they found me. Because some computer spit my name out on a list.”

Through their link, Young could sense his abiding distress, and something more— something hard for Young to understand, since he was someone who had always lived easily in his body. He had solid muscles, good reflexes, a certain gracefulness that lent itself to quarterback and center forward and made fighting as natural as breathing, though he hadn’t had to fight much, not beyond those early elementary-school tussles, so that it hadn’t taken on the ugliness he would later learn it could have— the feeling you got when you were pinned down and you had to push back punch back right now right FUCKING now because some animal part of you was programmed against dying and that was what dying felt like, it felt like animal justice, it felt like being too skinny and too weak and too small and the animals could sense it, like his father had sensed it, some physical stench of weakness that had made him think This isn’t my son which he had said the once and she had backhanded him and she had shouted And who the fuck’s son do you think he is then and it was the law of the jungle in that underwater-smelling kitchen and he was not an animal, he would not be an animal, and—

— _No_ , Young thought, gripping the edge of the table. That wasn’t him. That was coming from Rush. Their minds were blurring together at the edges. God. It had been a stupid idea to start drinking.

Rush had his eyes shut, a fist shoved against his temple. “Fuck,” he breathed. “Fuck. Don’t—“

Young said quickly, “I didn’t see anything; you were just sort of— spilling over.”

“For the love of Christ, can you no’ stay out of my fuckin’ head?”

“I wasn’t—“ Young said, and then stopped. Nothing he said would really help. And he didn’t want to _hurt_ Rush. God, he felt a terrible recognition of the kid in those memories, who was already so distinctly and assuredly the man that Young knew, and he wished he could— but the only thing he could offer that Rush would accept from him was silence. He sighed.

“I get it,” he said, opting to try and move forwards instead. “You weren’t happy that they wanted you for your genetics. So— what? They wanted you to switch projects from Icarus?”

Rush’s eyes flicked to him uncertainly, but after a moment’s hesitation he went along with Young’s redirection. “No,” he said, relaxing very slightly. “Icarus was at the same time. They wanted me to do the maths, but more than that, they wanted, from the very beginning—“ He shrugged and made a short, jerky gesture encompassing himself.

“And Telford was the head of this unnamed project.”

Rush shrugged again and looked away.

“So you let him— what, _experiment_ on you?”

“It was clear from Dr. Jackson’s research,” Rush said carefully, “that in order to gain full access to what lay beyond the ninth chevron… certain benchmarks would have to be met.”

“Benchmarks?”

“Electrophysiological requirements.”

Young could feel his jaw start to clench. “Could you just stop?”

“What, using words of more than four syllables?” Rush looked at him challengingly.

“Stop trying to bullshit me. Or, I don’t know, being deliberately cir-fucking-cuitous because you don’t want to say what you really mean.”

Young had been getting angrier since he’d had to say the word _experiment_. He knew that anger was the wrong strategy, but he hated, just really hated, the idea that was forming in his head of Rush as lab rat. He remembered standing— remembered Rush standing— barefoot in that black stone pool, hugging his elbows to his chest, wearing too-big fatigues. He had been cold. He had been scared. The whole room had felt hungry for him in a remote and inorganic way, and he had fed himself to it as though he were only clinically interested in the results. Like he had always done on the Destiny. Like Young had watched him do. Like he was nothing but a wrench or a rifle or a computer program, not something that _could_ be cold or scared, not something you were supposed to care about the way you cared about cold, scared things. Just something that was there to be used. Maybe if it had just been Telford, Young could have pitched a fit, thrown a table, gotten the anger out of his system, but it was Rush who thought like that. And that seemed worse.

Rush had hunched his shoulders, a defensive posture. “Don’t pretend you have some great fuckin’ insight into me,” he said. His accent had turned thick again. “You know very little more than nowt about me.”

“Are we going to pretend like I didn’t just live through whatever the fuck that was? With Telford? What kind of benchmark was that supposed to meet?”

“The project was interested in producing increased electrical activity in certain areas of the brain, seen briefly in Dr. Jackson before he ascended, and also in the clone of Anubis that was studied at Stargate Command. Anubis’s device offered the opportunity to achieve that result in a test subject.”

“Rush,” Young said, and his throat closed. God. A test subject. He had to shut his eyes for a second. “So Telford’s project was— rewiring your brain. Essentially.”

“That’s a limited but accurate description,” Rush said, staring fixedly at his cup.

“And you agreed to this?”

“Yes.”

“ _Why?”_

“Many different reasons.” Rush still hadn’t looked up. His fingers were twitching restlessly where they rested on the table. “Surely it’s— not too difficult to imagine what some of those might have been.”

“Why would you trust _Telford_ , of all people? Not even Jackson, but _Telford!_ ”

Something angry and dark and complicated and unhappy was wrecking Rush’s inner landscape. Young could feel him shoving it down relentlessly. Not a hint of it crossed his face, however. “Telford was the one who recruited me to the program,” he said. “It was only Jackson at first. Telford was the one who convinced me to join. He needed me, and he spent… a long time, a very long time, figuring out how to get what he wanted.”

There had always been something in the way he talked about Telford that Young didn’t like, something that set his teeth on edge. “And then he tried to murder you,” he said flatly.

“That’s not what happened,” Rush said sharply.

“I was there.”

“You weren’t.” Rush’s eyes narrowed. “You _weren’t there._ You were eavesdropping on something you had no way of understanding.”

“Rush, I was _in your head.”_

“You’re in my head all the fuckin’ time. Yet you show little inclination to understand higher mathematics or, indeed, basic logic.”

This was clearly bullshit. Young had never heard Rush offer such a thin counterargument. Rush was on the defensive, and it showed. Young couldn’t help his voice rising as he said, “I don’t need _higher mathematics_ to understand someone holding you underwater while you fight for your goddamn life!”

“It was part of the project,” Rush said. His thoughts were flying apart; he was struggling to keep something from rising to the surface. He did not like the water. He did not want to think of it. He did not— He took an unsteady breath. “It was part of the protocol. Certainly there’s no love lost between myself and David. But he did what was necessary. That’s what he does. What’s necessary.”

“ _David?_ ” Young said. That was what Rush had called him in the lab, too; and in the other fragments Young had glimpsed— when Telford had lit Rush’s cigarette, when he’d touched his bare shoulder. Young seized on the familiarity now, and it made him feel ugly, ruthless in a way that he wasn’t accustomed to. “Were you fucking him?”

There was a moment of absolute stillness, as though Rush couldn’t believe that Young had said it.

Then abruptly he was pushing back from the table, his cup clattering to the floor. His weather was as bruised and sparking as a thunderstorm in progress, one of the big ones you got in the Midwest that really battered at you. Young winced instinctively, even before the shrieking force of it hit him.

“Fuck you,” Rush said, his voice uneven. “Fuck you, _fuck you_. Like you’re some _paragon_ of fidelity, like you have _any right_ to ask me that question. Or do you only give a damn about fucking around if it’s with men?”

“I sure as _hell_ give a damn if it’s with _Telford_ ,” Young hissed. He was still struggling to make his way out from under the onslaught of Rush’s thoughts. It was like trying to follow a conversation with static blaring through headphones. “It’s a reasonable fucking question. He _kissed_ you. You know— while he was trying to murder you.”

“We’re done here,” Rush said, and made a move to leave.

Young grabbed his wrist, which Rush didn’t like. The cyclonic chaos of his thoughts became a determined attack against Young, something that had a panicked edge. Too late, Young realized that Rush was still thinking about the water— that he’d been devoting a significant amount of energy to holding some memory back, and with the feeling of being restrained, with Young’s hand hard as a cuff on him, which they hadn’t done, but just that feeling of being restrained, and the water—

_because water was its own restraint, because he did not like the water, and consequently the water made it difficult for him to think, and that was good, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it good? Because he could not access the information they needed; it was all just a branching web of water, the underwater smell of the kitchen and the river where he choked and David saying I’m glad I’m here I’m glad it’s me don’t fight this Nick let go and that reminds him to keep fighting and not to let go and so he keeps fighting and he does not let go even as they break his thoughts down into what must surely be one-picometer bits, all the thoughts they can access of course which is to say from before the lab, and he is so so grateful for that, because they cannot rip apart his mind and oh God if they turned him, they mustn’t ever ever turn him, he MUST keep them from shattering his mind and so it is good what David did, it is helpful, because the parts they can get are all right, they are nothing relevant, just Gloria dying and dying and dying and the choking in the river and the taste of rain and blood and bitumen in his teeth, which was the taste of Glasgow the taste of having his face shoved into the tarmac and Say it say it they had always said, Say it and he could not remember what they had wanted him to say but he would not say it because fuck them because he is not an animal he is not a body except that he does not like being in the water but that is rational it has a rational etiology and he clings to that fact as he rocks back and forth in a small dark room and his mam says And who the fuck’s son do you think he is then and his da hurls the radio and it was 1974 and it was summer the World Cup and the radio hit the window and Scotland were fucked even though they had lost no games and Gloria is dying again and if he does not submit soon they will give up on his mind and cut into his body and God it will be a fucking relief because it is only a body and he is not a body and please please please let it be soon because he does not like the water_

and Young sucked in a harsh breath, rocking back as Rush brought the memory under some semblance of control. Not a memory— that had been a _flashback_ , something crawlingly alive and vivid that had forced its way to the very front of Rush’s head.

“ _God_ ,” Young said, the word coming out strangled. “Was that—“

Rush was bent over, leaning against the back of his chair. A vague sense of nausea communicated itself from his mind to Young’s. “In retrospect,” he said thickly, “getting mad wi’ it on storage-room liquor might no’ have been the best idea.”

“You think?”

“Oh, fuck off. Like it’s not hard enough for me to begin with. You’ve seen the inside of my head.”

Young found the inside of Rush’s head beautiful, actually, in ways he lacked the vocabulary to articulate even to himself. It was chaotic, but full of connections that flashed like glints off the sharp sides of an object that stayed perpetually invisible to him, and sometimes, he thought, only partially visible to Rush. What was that story about the blind men and the elephant? Like that, but with an invisible elephant, and in more dimensions, and not an elephant, but something elegant and wondrous that Rush worked almost incessantly to outline.

Rush picked up the thought and looked pained. “You’re unusually perceptive tonight.”

“And you’re going to get about fifteen feet towards that door if you try to leave, so—“ Young shrugged clumsily. “You might as well sit down.”

“Right. I’d forgotten. Thanks for that.”

But Rush didn’t sit back down at once. He stayed leaning against the chair, his head swimming, his nerve-endings all still jumpy as fuck. Young, somewhat sobered by the adrenaline the flashback had triggered, and no longer thinking of Telford stroking Rush’s damp hair back, felt unpleasantly guilty.

“Sorry,” he ventured. “I was— you were right. I shouldn’t have asked.”

Rush waited a long time before giving him a short, curt nod.

“i always thought,” Young said awkwardly, after a pause, “that the way you—“ he waved a hand around his temple. “That it was just that you were, you know, a genius. But that’s not it, is it? It’s one of your, whatever-you-call-it, benchmarks.”

Rush shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “Once you exceed a certain number of standard deviations from the mean, you can’t really avoid a difference in thought that is both objective and subjective, so your primary assumption was well-founded if incorrect. The electrophysiological adjustment… magnified many extant issues.”

Young sighed. “You’re doing it again.”

“Well, what do you want me to say? That I could suddenly tell you how far a Brownian particle would travel in a given time interval, but I couldn’t explain the mathematics for it; that optimal maps were as easy as breathing; that I could speak fucking Russian after a few days of exposure, but I couldn’t identify a noun or verb? That common sense became so fucking foreign that I once stood on a Colorado street for twenty minutes trying to figure out a fucking parking sign?”

His voice was clipped and rising. He was headed off the rails.

“To be fair,” Young said, deliberately deadpan, “some of those signs are pretty confusing.”

As a diversion, it worked. Rush stopped and ducked his head, _almost_ smiling in a way that Young had rarely seen.

After a minute, he bent to collect his cup from the floor and cleaned the rim of it against his shirt. He sat down, and took the bottle from Young with a pointed expression.

“Why do you think we needed Eli?” he said, when he had poured himself a drink and downed it in one. “I couldn’t solve the problem. The irony was that in trying to gain the ability to access what lay beyond the ninth chevron, I lost the ability to get us there. David was… not happy. The result was not what he had hoped for.”

“By all means,” Young said. “Let’s not forget to think of _David_.”

Fortunately, Rush seemed untroubled by his heavy sarcasm. “You’ve not got the moral high ground, you know. He’s hardly the last person who’s tried to kill me. Admittedly, you didn’t quite have the guts to use your own hands, but as you’ll have just seen, yours was ultimately the more traumatic encounter. If such things can be usefully quantified.”

“It’s not the same,” Young said, taken aback, feeling shockingly hurt. He wasn’t like Telford. He didn’t want Rush to think of him the way Rush thought about Telford. There was a difference, a difference so obvious and important that surely, if he explained it the right way—But he didn’t know how to begin to put it in words, especially in his state of semi-intoxication. “I didn’t—“

“What?” Rush raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t do it for science? I’d respect you more if you had done.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Young said, though he didn’t know if he thought it was true. It was hard to really know things like that about Rush. Rush made it hard. But Young plunged ahead. “And for the record, I would never do that to you. I _will_ never do that to you. Just—“ He tried to communicate it to Rush mentally: he wouldn’t stand back and watch clinically as Rush suffered; he wouldn’t act like Rush should be grateful for getting hurt; he wouldn’t pretend it was _necessary_ , that it didn’t _matter_. That was what he couldn’t stand— how casual Telford had been about it, like it was somehow childish that Rush was fighting for his life.

Then: “What?” Young asked, somewhat offended, because Rush had laughed, or at least made a muted, painful sound that was something like a laugh. “You don’t believe me?”

“No,” Rush said. His gaze flinched down for a moment. “I believe you.” His expression was difficult to look at, but Young couldn’t not look at it. Rush had, Young thought, really unusual eyes, slightly too dark for the face in which they were set. They managed to be hard and soft at the same time.

They were silent for a while after that. Rush’s thoughts slid further away from sobriety, plunging into a blackness that resembled the ship. It was like being in the trenches of the ocean, someplace airless and claustrophobic where only strange lifeforms could live, only instead of lifeforms there were circuits and lines of code. There was nothing there that Young could understand. He felt a surge of frustration and, perhaps, somewhere behind it, an angry kind of helplessness.

“It’s worse now,” Rush said at length. “The— thinking. I tried to explain operator theory to Chloe, and you might as well explain how it is you see or sleep. It’s become— an autonomic function. I can’t do arithmetic anymore, but I can generate force fields, and modulate shield harmonics, and—“

He broke off, his mind echoing Young’s own frustration. One or maybe both of them was— were?— remembering a late night on Icarus Base. Rush, red-eyed and crooking an arm behind his shoulder to try to get at the pain of his neck, had been staring at his white board. The air recirculators had clang-clang-clanged through oh-two-hundred, starting their cycle over, and Rush had flinched: the whole nervous and fragile monoculture of his thoughts falling to pieces like a torn-through spiderweb. How could he be expected to focus when the whole problem gave him vertigo like he was oriented at the wrong angle to it like he was looking at it sideways and through a prism but he would not be defeated he _refused_ to be defeated, and he reached for the eraser once more—

Rush said quickly, sensing Young’s incipient distress (how had he not noticed, back then, that Rush was struggling to keep his head above water, how close he was to falling apart), “I found it upsetting at first, but I’ve since— adjusted.”

This wasn’t made more convincing by the fact that he immediately went for another drink.

“If you were so _adjusted_ ,” Young said skeptically, watching him make a face at the shot of liquor, “then why didn’t you want to sit in the chair in the first place? If you’d been— God, whatever, electrophysiologically designed for it?”

Rush immediately torqued his thoughts into a kind of obfuscating spiral, a high-speed kaleidoscopic effect that made Young feel sick to look at. He had to pull back, squinting and putting the heel of a hand to his temple.

“You could just _tell_ me when you don’t want to answer a question,” he said with some irritation.

“Oh, and you’ll just respect my boundaries, will you?” Rush gave him a cool glance. “You won’t. You can’t.”

“So you’re going to give me a migraine every time you don’t like what I ask you?”

“It’s proving an effective measure so far.” But Young could feel Rush relent after a moment. “I—“ he began, and stopped. “I didn’t want to sit in the chair because I was afraid of what might happen to the crew if I did. If _I_ did.”

“What—“

“I’m no’ going to answer that question.”

Young buried his head in his hands. “You have no idea,” he said, his voice muffled, “how unsatisfying I find your answers to begin with.”

Rush looked at him with a trace of a smile. “On the contrary, I believe I’m the only one who knows _exactly_ how unsatisfying you find them.”

The moment of amusement didn’t last. Rush was thinking once again, very vaguely and distantly, of Telford, with an almost wistful feeling. Something Telford had said to him. _You’re never satisfied, are you, Nick? I like that about you_. But then on Icarus he’d said, _It’s no good pretending you’re not— I don’t know how else to say this— broken. That kind of denial isn’t useful to anyone._ It had been one of a handful of times they’d spoken since the lab.

Young couldn’t help wincing. He remembered his conversation with the AI. _I hope it’s fixable_ , he’d said, and the AI had said, _He does not think so._ He tried to keep control of his thoughts, but he could tell Rush had seen a brief flash of the AI outlined against blurring stars on the observation deck.

Rush shot him a wordless sense of inquiry.

//It talks to me too, you know,// Young projected at him. //Usually when I’m being particularly stupid.//

This time Rush was the one to drop his face into his hands. //Brilliant. Interpersonal advice from a starship.//

//You were pretty adamant about her— its personhood yesterday.//

//Aye, well, I could hardly help it, could I? I cannae be held responsible for my actions when I’m chemically impaired.//

“Like now,” Young said, trying and failing to hide a smile. “I should tell you that you’re getting, uh, increasingly Scottish.”

“I am not,” Rush said, his accent immediately sharpening. “Shit. I hate that.”

“Why? If anything, I’d say it’s— surprisingly charming.” Rush wasn’t the only one, Young thought, who was probably too drunk.

“Don’t be charmed by me,” Rush said, staring at the wall, looking anxious. “Don’t— fuck. What was the point of this, anyway? It’s no’ a conversation, it’s just you takin’ advantage to pry some answers fae me wi’out gi’in up any yourself. _From_ me. Fuck,” he said, sounding disgusted. “Fuck off, _charming._ You’re downright calculatin’.”

“That’s not true,” Young said, startled to find how much the accusation stung. He reached out tentatively and laid his hand on Rush’s forearm. They’d been touching, he realized, a lot lately. He hadn’t had time for it to seem strange to him. No more than anything else seemed strange. He was slow to pull away, and Rush didn’t protest the slowness. He just fixed Young with an inscrutable glance.

Young said, after a strange beat in which both of them were silent, “I’m not interrogating you, or something. This is what talking to people looks like. You know, that thing you never do?”

“I talk tae people.”

“You yell at them. Or give them speeches. I don’t think that really counts.”

“Yes, well.” Rush frowned at him, still dissatisfied.

“What, you want me to spill my heart to you?” Young spread his hands. “You already know most of my secrets. Compared to you, I’m an open book. Me and TJ— you know about that whole disaster. I turned down Icarus to patch things up with my wife, which— you can see how well that all worked out. Pretty much par for the course. Oh, you’ll like this, actually— she’s with Telford now.”

“Get fucked.” Rush seemed torn between a grimace and laughter. “How the fuck did that happen?”

“Dropping in and out of FTL. I always switched with Telford. More fool me.” He’d thought he was mostly over it, like he was over TJ, but some part of the betrayal still burned.

Rush didn’t respond at once. He was looking sleepy-eyed, which was probably a sign that he ought to be cut off. But he said eventually, with an odd sort of gentleness, “He’s no’ a bad person, David, surely. He’s just a bad _person._ If you— see whit I mean.”

“You sure about that, genius?”

Rush looked down at his empty cup. “No,” he said. “I suppose I’m an incurable optimist.”

“Now I _know_ you’re wasted.” Young was pretty tired, for his part, though nowhere near as drunk as Rush. He stood up, feeling the world slope unpleasantly around him. “Come on. Let’s blow this popsicle stand before I end up having to carry you. My back’s not up for it.”

“Don’t fash yourself; you willnae hae t’ do it.”

Young stared at him. “You’re really _very_ Scottish,” he pointed out. “You’ve been keeping that on the down low, haven’t you?”

Rush closed his eyes. “Fuck,” he said.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to blow your cover.”

They made their way out, Rush swaying on a single crutch in a way that suggested he wasn’t entirely certain where the floor was located. Young ended up half-supporting him, and he was placing bets with himself on whether he was going to end up carrying him after all when the doors slid open and revealed Eli working on his laptop in the hallway.

“Eli, what are you—?” Young asked.

“I relieved Greer about an hour ago,” Eli said without looking up. “He seemed to think it was necessary that you guys have some kind of escort, so…” He broke off, finally catching sight of their less-than-precise appearance (and probably a whiff of their alcoholic smell). “Wait a minute. Are you drunk? Is _he?_ You got _Rush_ drunk?”

“Um,” Young stalled.

“Do you hae to state the fuckin’ well-seen like it’s a bloody revelation?” Rush asked. “If you’re doin’ it for some form of comic effect, you can jist wrap it; I’ve no’ got the patience.”

“This is incredible,” Eli said. He shut his laptop and pushed himself to his feet. “I understood about four words of that. Do you have any idea how long I’ve been trying to do this?”

“What,” Young asked, “get Rush drunk?”

“ _Yes_.” Eli’s eyes were wide. He turned to Rush. “Okay, seriously: top five desert island movies.”

“I’m no’ interested in films; they’re aye slow and—“ Rush waved a hand in a vague, linear motion. “Talky. Boring.”

“God, you are _not_ watching the right films, but: fine. Okay. Top five things you miss about Earth.”

“Eli—“ Young interjected. “You’re supposed to be helping, not playing Twenty Questions.”

“Do you even know how to _play_ Twenty Questions? Because that is _not_ how you play Twenty Questions.”

“Coffee,” Rush said, as he let Eli take the arm that Young wasn’t supporting. “Cigarettes. Paracetamol. Playing the piano. Having loads of those little notebooks.”

“You play the piano?” Eli asked.

“All civilized people do.”

Young started walking down the hallway, hoping that the complicated motion of coordinating the effort of supporting Rush would distract Eli from that line of questioning. It seemed innocent enough on the surface, but it wasn’t, he was pretty sure. He doubted that Rush had played the piano for some time, even before he left Earth.

Thankfully, Eli was barreling ahead with his investigation. “Favorite band?”

“The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.”

“You are impossible. Favorite food?”

“Really greasy chips.”

“Okay, A: I don’t believe you, and therefore B: you are _impossible_. Just for that: do you think I’m smart?”

“Obviously.”

“How smart?”

“Pure deed brilliant. But you know that already.”

Young glanced over at Eli, who had clearly not known this. To his credit, Eli covered it well: just a startled glance at Rush, and then a second, darting look at Young, as though to confirm that Young had also heard what Eli thought he’d heard.

“Yeah,” Eli said. “Of course I know. I just wanted to hear you say it.”

He moved on to a lighter and less fraught list of questions, and the three of them paused at the intersection of several hallways at around the time he was trying to goad Rush into naming a favorite television show. Young had started to head down one hallway, and Eli another; for a moment, tangled up, they froze.

“Um,” Eli said guardedly. “… His quarters are this way.”

“Yeah, I know,” Young said. “We’re going to my quarters.”

“…Why?”

“Because that’s where we’re going.”

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.” Eli was chewing on his lower lip.

Young wanted to roll his eyes at the fact that the first idea to pop into Eli’s head had been— well, the idea that he was clearly trying to avoid having to say out loud. Kids today, where did they get these notions, et cetera, et cetera. He imagined asking, _What, you think we’re heading off for a one-night stand?_ But it wasn’t funny, not really, for a lot of reasons. _We’re not fucking, we’re just going to sleep in the same room, probably in the same bed, because being too far apart makes us feel like we’re dying. Also, earlier I was inside his head while he was_ actually _dying, and now that I stop to think about it for a second, even if we weren’t telepathically stuck together, I’d probably want us to sleep in the same bed, because it was really fucking traumatic, in ways I can’t even get into, and I don’t want him to be alone, and I just kind of need to be_ close _to him._ That would go over great as an explanation. Jesus, maybe he was drunker than he’d thought.

He could feel amusement pouring off of Rush, who had also spotted Eli’s worry— amusement, and something else that was harder to read.

“It’s fine, Eli,” Rush said. “There’s nae need to worry about my virtue. We cannae separate; that’s all.”

Eli looked from one of them to the other. “Since when?”

“Since Telford swapped me out and the ship lost power," Young said.

“I guess that explains why you’ve been MIA from— basically everywhere.”

“Yeah,” Young said shortly, not happy about the reminder. “It remains a little unclear what’s going to happen if we can never get more than fifteen feet from each other. People are going to start to notice.”

“People have already started to notice,” Eli said. “They’re just kind of, um, coming up with their own theories?”

Young cast his eyes to the heavens. “What are they saying?”

“Well, some people definitely think that Rush has brainwashed you into doing his bidding. You know, with his superpowers that he has from the ship."

"As if it requires superpowers," Rush said disdainfully.

"Or that the ship messed with Rush's brain so he'd be nicer to you," Eli said.

Young said, "I wish."

"Aye, you'd loue that, wouldn't you," Rush said, scowling at him. "As if the ship gies a toss."

"No one can understand what you're saying," Young told him.

"Acquire some fuckin' litsa— some fucking litra—" Rush stopped, frustrated. "Learn to speak the fucking language," he said, enunciating carefully.

Eli was obviously trying not to laugh.

"I'll get right on that," Young said. "In the morning. Eli—"

"Right," Eli said. He threw a mock-salute at them. "Good luck with, you know, the superpowers."

He headed back the way they'd come.

Young continued on down the hall, Rush leaning heavily on him, till he and Rush had reached his quarters. The door opened for them at a twitch of Rush’s hand, which was a nice touch.

“You can stop actin’ surprised when I prove t’be less than totally helpless,” Rush said, catching Young’s surprise. “I’m no’ that stoatered.”

“Right,” Young said dryly, and removed his supporting arm, letting Rush stagger into the room under his own control— which resulted in him lurching from couch to table to wall, looking somewhat seasick.

“ _And_ you can jis’ haud your hoverin’,” Rush said without bothering to turn around. “I’m scunnered wi’ it.”

Young covered his mouth with a hand to hide his smile. “I have no idea what any of that means, but I’m sure I’m supposed to be very insulted.”

Rush said, not very clearly, “Go on, then.”

By dint of pure willpower, he managed to make his way to Young’s bathroom. The door slid shut behind him with a solid thunk.

//If you pass out in there,// Young shot at him, //I’m going to make your life miserable.//

Rush, predictably, ignored him.

Young rolled his eyes and dropped onto the end of his bed. Once he’d sat, he felt incredibly weary, and a headache was starting that portended the hangover he would have the next day. He rubbed a hand against the thick, heavy curls he couldn’t get rid of, now that he was stuck in a distant galaxy without access to haircuts. After a while he got up the energy to take off his jacket, belt, and boots. He hesitated before taking his pants off— he usually slept in his boxers, but he had made a concession to Rush’s presence two nights ago. What the hell, though. Rush had worked for the military long enough to know that soldiers weren’t shy. There was no reason Young _should_ be shy. They were just— two men sleeping in the same room.

But he found himself turning the sheets down, squaring the pillows, and trying to take up only one narrow slice of the bed, as though to make it clear in some way that he expected Rush to sleep beside him. That it was something he wanted. He had to stop and consider that word, _want_. He’d been using it a lot lately. But he wasn’t comfortable letting it too close to Rush. There were a lot of reasons why that was a bad idea. He didn’t have the energy to unpack all of them. 

Rush emerged damp-faced, clad in his BDUs and boots and t-shirt. He stopped when he saw Young, taking in the implicit sleeping arrangement. He didn’t say anything for a moment, and neither did Young. The silence stretched, but not uncomfortably. Just— fragile.

“You tried to sleep on the floor last time,” Young said at last. “You don’t have to do that.”

Rush fixed him with a curiously intense and uncertain stare. He was hugging his elbows to his chest, almost as though he were chilly, though it was a perfectly normal temperature in the room.

“Fine,” Rush said finally, and very carefully sat on the end of the bed to bend over and unlace his boots.

Young breathed out slowly. He felt like he’d just stared down a wild animal.

When he had shed his boots and BDUs, Rush crawled under the sheets and curled on his side at the far edge of the bed, facing away from Young. He seemed determined to pretend that he wasn’t there, or that Young wasn’t there. When Young stood to go into the bathroom and brush his teeth, he was struck by an impulse to be very quiet, as though if he moved too fast Rush would run.

When he returned, he found that Rush was sleeping deeply. He’d fallen asleep with his glasses on. Cautiously, very cautiously, Young reached over to remove them. Rush made a small dissatisfied noise, frowning, but otherwise he didn’t stir. Young folded the glasses and set them on the bedside table. He looked at Rush. He didn’t know what he was thinking. Just that Rush looked unprotected without his glasses on. He was working very hard not to think about any of the things he’d seen that day. Better not to think about them. That was definitely what Rush would prefer. And Young could do that; he could keep that stuff out of the center of his consciousness, if he had to. But he couldn’t stop thinking that Rush looked unprotected without his glasses on.

He turned out the light. It was a long time before he slept.


	15. In Dreams Begins Responsibility

_He is in the mint-green parlor of the little house in Princeton that they lived in when he was at the IAS and he is sat at the rented piano, what had it been, a Bechstein, and he is playing the Schubert arpeggione sonata that she had transcribed for the violin because she had liked for them to play Schubert together and she had said_ You have the right hands for Schubert _looking at his hands critically and he had said What do you mean by that and she had said_ Or Mozart, maybe, something light and with a lot of speed and distance _, and he had said I think I’m offended and she had said_ You know this about yourself, you don’t keep anything close to the surface, not like Debussy or Chopin _, and he had said I can play Chopin, and she had said_ What's under the surface is always a half-step behind you, the audience doesn’t realize till after they’ve heard it that it was sad, _and he had said I can play Chopin watch, and he had launched into a Chopin prelude, number fifteen, and she had said_ Nick not everything is a fight you have to win.

 _And so he is playing this sonata but she keeps missing her entrances because of course she is dead and so how could she make her entrances in the Schubert arpeggione sonata but he does not want to think about this and he cannot think about this so he climbs under the piano and curls his knees to his chest and thinks about the infinite marble problem for a while, putting two numbered marbles into a bowl and taking one out over and over and it is a paradox because in the end the bowl must be empty and have infinitely many marbles in it at the same time and it is an ill-formed problem probably but he finds it reassuring to imagine adding and removing the marbles over and over and over keeping track of all the numbers that are left but then David is reaching into the bowl and taking all of the marbles and David says in a bored voice,_ Jesus Christ, a fucking kids’ game, Nick? I thought we agreed that there were better things for you to do with your time _, and how did David get there in the first place someone wasn’t careful someone left the door unlatched and then it was too late because once David was there he_

 _does not want to think about this and he CANNOT think about this and David is RIGHT THERE in the stagnant pool under his thoughts and if he stays then David is going to PULL HIM UNDER and_ nacuam nametque neod conagitere potissetque supo acua mutatio en eod est quom huemom eos david tangevadque smatlam posnevadque quod entegras neis nessere indicevad quod ne'emines neem nemquam tangere potisset ne'emines nemquam denovod nemquam _so he starts climbing the ladder that always seems to be waiting right in the corner of his brain and it is made of very fine steel strings like the E string she broke and he said God it’s like a weapon and the strings cut into his fingers like a warning but when he gets far enough up he will be safe because_

_he is_

_in Colorado and it’s about that time in the evening when everything seems to be carrying its own shadow on its back and the sky has darkened just enough that it’s not really daytime, but not enough that it’s really dusk. He’s on a fucking sports pitch of all things, or wandering the sidelines, and his immediate instinctual reaction to_ that _is to wrinkle up his nose because a fucking_ sports pitch _? Really?_

_“Rush!” Young calls from the pitch. “You going to be our ref?”_

_“I’d rather die,” Rush says pleasantly, and makes for the tiered metal benches. Rodney McKay is sitting there, working on his laptop, so that must be the designated zone for people with functioning brains._

_Out on the pitch, Young is playing some sort of game with a set of other men who are no doubt also colonels; they look the type, with their large bodies and boisterous manner of slapping each other on the back, and there is something very repressed-homosexual about all American military officers, their hunger for the undemanding company of other men, which Rush had found disorientating at first and then doubly so when David—_

_“Hey,” Young says, jogging over. “I thought we weren’t going to talk about him.”_

_Rush stares at him, confused. “Did you just—“_

_“I mean, we can if you want to, but you said the whole reason you wanted to come by was so you could get out of your own head for a while.”_

_Rush presses the heels of his hands against his temples, feeling abruptly uneasy. “Something is not…” he says, and closes his eyes “Something is… happening here…”_

_“Um, yeah,” Young says, like this should be obvious. “We’re playing football. Which I know you hate, but if you want to grab a beer, we’ll probably be done in a minute. Because Cam is going to get his_ ass kicked!” _he yells in the direction of an aggressively nondescript brown-haired man._

_“I’m,” Rush says. The rush of queasiness passes. “Are you sure that it’s… all right?”_

_“Why wouldn’t it be all right? Hey, I’ll introduce you to Sheppard. He’s—“ Then it’s Young’s turn to look confused. His brow creases and he stares at Rush for a moment. Then he finally shakes his head. “Anyway. Just stick around.”_

_So Rush sits on one the metal benches and the shadows grow in the long Colorado light and after a while it occurs to him that he has a packet of cigarettes in his pocket, and he lights one, and watches Young get into a mock-fight with one of the other colonels, and McKay says without looking up from his computer, “How can you claim to be an intelligent human being and still opt to deliberately destroy yourself?” and Rush says, “Fuck off, Rodney,” and McKay says, “Obscenity is the province of those without answers,” and Rush says, “That_ was _the answer: because fuck off.” But he can’t summon up the vitriol that would have perfected such a riposte, because he feels shockingly balanced, as though someone has actually reached right into his ribcage and is holding his heart in the palm of their hand so that he doesn’t have to worry about what it’s doing, he can just_ _draw a fucking breath—_

* * *

Rush opens his eyes to the quiet dark of Young’s quarters and then he closes his eyes immediately because while he was asleep he had moved or Young had moved so that they are curled body to body and he does not know what is more unacceptable if he had moved or Young had moved but one of the two things has happened and it had happened the last time and it causes the programs he was executing to stall and he cannot—

proceed like this really and there is an obvious solution which is to get up quietly from under the arm that Young has draped across his shoulders because that arm is unacceptable because there is no obligation for it to be there, their radius has improved, he does not need the apposition that only touch can provide, he is trying to accomplish nothing so logically he should get up he should get up _now_ he should right now he should just _move_.

So he moves and he gets up and Young stirs but does not awaken. Rush stands by the bed and looks at him.

“You are upset,” Gloria says uncertainly from behind his left shoulder. Then she flickers and projects to him as Daniel Jackson. This is a new tactic she is employing. She projects to him as Daniel Jackson because she does not wish for him to becomes confused and because he was hurt by what happened in the interface. It is hard for her to understand this kind of damage because the human brain though deterministic is chaotic and inputs have outputs that she struggles to predict.

“Yes,” Rush says, because it is counterproductive for him to lie to her when he is attempting to improve her observance of human behavioral cues.

“I will speak to him if you wish.”

“No. Don’t.” He moves his arm as though she had proposed to approach Young this very moment and as though physically blocking her would do any good.

“But if he understood—“

“He won’t.”

“But—“

“It’s nothing.” Finally he finds it in himself to turn away. He searches for the indicator light of his laptop in the dark and bends to to pick the laptop up. After all he always has work to do. “It’s really a very inconsiderable problem.”

Gloria— Jackson— the AI— says nothing, but he feels its anxious eyes on him in the dark.

* * *

 _He is considering a Bloch sphere which is also known as a Poincaré sphere and topology is not really his natural area but one can represent pure qubit state space with the Bloch sphere which makes it practically useful and some people would argue the universe itself has the shape of a Bloch sphere but that is making assumptions about the universe that he still shies away from even now even with what he knows to be true and why has he always been drawn to mathematical uncertainty to undecidability to superposition to corners of logic that the mind rejects is it because_ You know what it’s like _Chloe says_ to be sort of the wrong number of dimensions. Or I don’t mean dimensions obviously but _Yes he says is it that obvious and she says_ It’s strange talking to you ever since they changed me it’s like I put on 3D glasses and now you kind of… extend. God, I really don’t mean dimensions I know that mathematically— _But he cuts her off: No it’s all right._

Is it? _she asks._ Is it all right? _She is looking at him uncertainly and she is kneeling in a pool of liquid in a shallow depression in a black stone lab and she is wearing a white dress that floats up around her like a flower and David says_ Ready? _and throws the lever and he can hear the charge mount in the concealed capacitors and he is so scared he is SO SCARED HE IS_

_P A V D O S P A V D O S E S T G L O R I A Q U A E S S O N E O D F A C T U M P E R M I T H E R E P O T I S S E S G L O R I A N E P O T I S S E S N E U M N E M Q U A M Q U I R I T A N T S E S T H I C D I S C E D E N D O S E S T N U M C I U G I S T E R N U M C_

_and_

_“I mean,” Young says, “the thing that people don’t get is the isolation. Sure, it’s beautiful when you’re coming two weeks a year for ski season, but even someplace like Casper or Missoula starts to feel pretty goddamn small when you’re five, six hours away from the nearest city. And don’t even talk to me about when it snows.”_

_Rush stares at him._

_Young is driving some form of American car down an interstate highway. He is wearing sunglasses. The radio is on, and it is projecting something that Rush can only, without appropriate contextual knowledge, characterize as “gospel” with a fair amount of static mixed in. Outside a long stretch of tawny hills keeps rising and falling, with an almost unimaginably wide sky rounding over them._

_Rush is sitting in the car’s passenger seat, wearing cowboy boots and a leather jacket._

_“And Cheyenne,” Young says dismissively. “That’s practically Denver. That’s not even the real West.”_

_“Where are we?” Rush asks._

_Young shrugs. “You said you wanted to go on a road trip. We’re about ten miles south of Kaycee, on I-25.”_

_“And where are we going?” He is absolutely certain he should know this. He is absolutely certain he should be more concerned about not knowing. He should be panicking. He shouldn’t be calm to the point that he’s almost drowsy, and he doesn’t know why he suddenly is._

_Young pauses and frowns. “I used to—“ he says slowly, looking disorientated for a moment. “I used to drive up this way to visit my folks back when I was stationed in Cheyenne. They’re outside Buffalo.”_

_“Oh,” Rush says._

_“They raise cattle.”_

_“I’ve never believed that was something people actually did.”_

_Young shoots him an amused glance. “City boy, huh?”_

_“How could you tell."_

_“So this is good for you. You get to see the real America.”_

_“That was what they told me about Colorado Springs. Apparently the real America is a lot of impossibly butch men in uniforms who listen to bad country-rock music and get off on telling me what I can and can’t do.”_

_Young grins. “I think that’s just the Mountain.”_

_“No; I’m fairly certain it’s the entire town.”_

_A short silence follows._

_“Butch, huh,” Young said reflectively._

_Rush makes a vague, impatient hand gesture, not looking at him._

_After a while, Young says, “I always found it pretty stifling myself.”_

_He turns the radio up a little, and Rush has no choice but to listen to an old a cappella mono recording of a song about standing at the foot of a mountain. He’s sure that the mountain is supposed to be God, or heaven, or some other very American sort of thing. But it’s a strangely haunting song, perhaps because it sounds as though it’s been transmitted over a very long distance, or from a very long time ago._

_Rush looks out the window, at the gold landscape that goes forever. The car rattles smoothly down the road._

_“This isn’t what I imagined it would be like,” he says._

* * *

“What,” Rush says reflexively at the sense of having been abruptly awakened.

“Mm,” Young mumbles unintelligibly against his neck and Rush can feel him frown in his sleep protesting at having his dreams disturbed and presumably he is still driving across America alone now on the road between the low hills or perhaps he has moved on which is better and is dreaming of who the fuck knows, guns and punching people maybe whatever it is that colonels dream about and probably in the morning he will not remember Rush was there and that too is better it is objectively absolutely just unquestionably better.

“You asked me to wake you,” the AI says. It looks like Daniel Jackson and more’s the pity as it has now also started behaving like him with the way it squints at Rush through its glasses with a concerned expression and gives him an apologetic smile.

Rush lets his head drop to the pillow. “Yes.”

“If you are tired, you should continue sleeping. I am concerned that you do not allow yourself sufficient sleep, Nick.”

“It’s not relevant,” Rush says and he sits up and Young almost awakens but Rush projects a steady stream of _sleep sleep sleep_ at him and Young sighs and turns and goes back to sleep and that is good. Rush lingers in his thoughts just to make sure Young will not wake up because if Young wakes up there will be the usual questions and recriminations. What are you up to Rush. What are you plotting Rush. Why are you such a cold-hearted bastard. How are you trying to kill the crew this week Rush. I don’t trust you I don’t trust you Tell me Tell me Tell me. God. At least in the time loop Young had had a new refrain although it was not a new refrain really it’s just that I trust you I trust you I trust you had been the appropriate variation of battering down the door screaming Let me in.

But Young is sleeping deeply and will not wake up. He is dreaming that he is driving through stargate after stargate in search of something he vaguely knows he ought to miss and it’s a little sad perhaps but well that’s the nature of dreams so Rush leaves him to dream about it and he’s only a little bit belated in pulling away from Young’s thoughts and it’s not for any particular reason just the lasting effects of sleep making him stupid and slow to react.

“Right,” he says to the AI. “Time to work.”

“Nick,” the AI says hesitantly.

Rush stands and rakes a hand through his hair. He doesn’t look at the AI. "It's better this way," he says.

* * *

They’re getting through _Young says and Gloria says desperately_ Nick Nick they’re getting through _and the ship is shaking with weapons fire and an alarm is sounding and he can hear the shields shrieking in his head and it is so unharmonious that he is nauseated by it the wrongness of it fields emitting all of the WRONG harmonics and he knows what he has to do and Young says_ You know what you have to do _and Young is pushing him gently into the chair and the restraints are snapping around him and he is scared he is scared he is scared and he says I can’t I can't you don’t understand it’s not going to— and he does not like being restrained and Gloria says_ But you have to _and the neural bolts engage but nothing happens_ nothing happens _and David says_ What the fuck were you thinking Nick we’ve been over this it didn’t work it just fucked you up _and Scott is shouting on the radio about a hull breach and Young says_ I don’t understand why didn’t it work _and Gloria says_ Oh darling I’m sorry but your data is corrupted I can’t allow you access to the ship _and Young is holding him down against the chair saying_ Try again Rush you knew that this was part of it you always knew  _and Rush is struggling, fighting, and Gloria says_ I'm so sorry but you’d corrupt us too _and Young says_ Don’t fight this _but he is fighting and_ hic esfugiendos est quaesso neod telhet neod ne telhet ALIQUOBID IS BERENDOS EST _and then Young is_

 _saying_ Well come on then  _very impatiently_   _and_

 _seizing his wrist and_ pulling _him_

 _and they_ crawl _into a_

_small bright space and Rush thinks it is the inside of the FTL drive but it is not the inside of the FTL drive or it is the inside of the FTL drive but it stops being the inside of the FTL drive and starts being the inside of a canvas tent. The light is coming from two electric lanterns that are drawing the steady attention of moths, and outside the tent a horde of American insects are chirping their admiration to the dark. Young is sitting cross-legged, wearing some sort of plaid abomination, and so, he is astonished to discover, is Rush. In the narrow accommodation they are slightly hunched together._

_“This is nice,” Young says mildly, looking around. “This is what I used to do when I was a kid.”_

_“What, waste your time imitating mindless frontier woodsmen?” Rush rolls his eyes. “Why am I not surprised.”_

_“Right, I guess you were reading textbooks or something.” Then Young pauses, looking troubled. “You were—“_

_“Don't,” Rush says quietly._

_Young looks at him for a long time. Then he says, “Marshmallow?”_

_From behind his back, he produces a plastic bag of pillowy white American marshmallows. He pulls one out, dusty and fat, and waggles it in front of Rush._

_Rush’s nose wrinkles in disgust. “That,” he says, “is an item not found in nature.”_

_“I don't know what you're talking about. Here we are in nature, and here it is.” Young pops the marshmallow into his mouth. “God,” he says reflectively, “this really takes me back. You know, my dad made me this tent. Me and my brothers used to sit out in it after we’d been catching fireflies. It was so quiet outside, after it got dark— we'd feel like we were the only people in the world.”_

_“That sounds peaceful,” Rush says without thinking. For some reason his eyelids are heavy._

_“Sometimes I’d poke my head out of the tent and look up at the stars— you get a lot of stars in northern Wyoming; you can see the Milky Way. And I felt really small and really safe.”_

_Rush's eyes are drifting closed._

_“And I’d think,” Young says, “about the whole universe out there, all those stars, miles and miles away—“_

_“Light-years,” Rush corrects sleepily._

_“Well, I was eight years old; I didn’t know that.” Young pauses. “Here,” he says, and Rush feels something draped over him: a scratchy wool blanket. “That’s from my dad’s old Army kit.”_

_“I loathe the American armed forces,” Rush murmurs._

_“Yeah,” Young says tolerantly. “I know.”_

_“This is a terrible idea. I’m not supposed to be—“_

_“Shh,” Young whispers._

_Rush prepares an offensive rejoinder, but he’s so fucking tired and for some reason the canvas walls of the tent seem to block out all the noise in his head. There’s normally so much noise in his head and now it’s just oversized trees sighing, big heavy branches brushed-through by the wind, and maybe a car in the distance, the call of a bird, Young crinkling up the plastic bag and humming something out of tune—_

* * *

Rush wakes and for quite a long time he just lies there breathing because this is unacceptable this cannot be tolerated this is too fucking much to be borne; Young is curled around him a soft arm at his waistline and this cannot be allowed to continue and there was a dream and the details are fading but the details are not relevant, what is relevant is—

He squeezes his eyes shut. What is relevant is—

What is _relevant_ —

_is—_

Young's hand tightens briefly in the fabric of Rush's shirt as though sensing some current of distress in the unbearably shared space that overlaps them and this is  _too much_ it is going to do to him what force always does to objects that try to endure it, and so here's what is going to happen what's going to happen is

He is going to slip out from under Young’s arm and he is going to climb off of the bed and he is going to stand and he is going to find his crutch and he is going to limp to the sofa where his laptop is waiting and he is going to sit down and he is going to open the laptop up and he is going to ignore the AI who is going to try to tell him that he should sleep even though he should _not_ sleep that much is fucking transparent and he is going to let it in all of the noise and he is going to force it into order he is going to mark the boundaries where all the keys fit into the locks and then it is going to be all right when that part is over and he is hardly even going to notice that Young is dreaming or what Young is dreaming about and Young for his part is certainly not going to notice that anything has happened and so everything is going to reach its paradigmatic stasis and that is how this is going to go.

So he slips out from under Young’s arm and he climbs off of the bed and he stands and he finds his crutch and he limps to the sofa where his laptop is waiting and he sits down and opens the laptop up and he ignores the AI (“Nick if you will not sleep please allow the ship to supplement your energy levels Nick are you listening to me”) and he lets in all of the noise and he begins to sort it he begins to perceive all the secret mechanisms the keys the locks the doors and any minute now this part is going to be over and then it is going to be all right when this part is over any minute now when this part is over it is going to be all right—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "nacuam nametque neod conagitere potissetque supo acua mutatio en eod est quom huemom eos david tangevadque smatlam posnevadque quod entegras neis nessere indicevad quod ne'emines neem nemquam tangere potisset ne'emines nemquam denovod nemquam" = "He does not like the water and he cannot think about this and under the water a change is waiting in him because David touched him on the shoulder and left a mark and it means that he is not whole that no one can ever touch him again no one ever again ever"
> 
> "PAVDOSPAVDOSESTGLORIAQUAESSONEODFACTUMPERMITHEREPOTISSESGLORIANEUMNEMQUAMQUIRITANTSESTHICDISCEDENDOSESTNUMCIUGISTER" = "He is scared, scared, Gloria please you can't let this happen Gloria never he's screaming he has to get out of here now right now"
> 
> "hic esfugiendos est quaesso neod telhet neod ne telhet ALIQUOBID IS BERENDOS EST" = He has to escape please he can't bear it he can't bear it he has to go somewhere else
> 
>  
> 
> [The song playing in Young's car](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxDa1DZ4tGE)


	16. Chapter 16

By Young’s estimation, he was roughly two weeks in the hole when it came to reading the science team’s reports. (He preferred not to think about the backlog he was facing in terms of actually writing reports; the near-constant crises he had faced since the ship had melded itself to Rush, and the need to subordinate so many of his needs to Rush’s own, had left him somewhat devoid of free time.)

He’d spent the last week playing catch-up on public appearances, showing his face on the bridge and in the mess, and— as he and Rush still had a twenty-five feet radius— dragging Rush along with him, which had not been a popular move with Rush or with the crew. Rush had gotten increasingly short-tempered, culminating in an incident in which one of Wray’s constitution-building meetings had to be cut short when the mess (where it was being held) suffered an unexplained life-support failure. Young thought Rush probably hadn’t done it on purpose— _probably_ — but it seemed like the ship was getting more and more responsive to Rush’s moods. So Young had decided they’d take a day off. That was why he was sitting in his quarters plowing through unread paperwork, only to suddenly find himself reading that:

_…closer examination of the viral samples obtained revealed that although this strain has similar features to the plague that wiped out the Ancients, it is not identical. Full sequencing of the viral genome recovered from samples on the Destiny revealed substantial differences on both a nucleic acid and protein level. Results from maximum parsimony analysis with bootstrapping, using viral sequences from the Destiny’s database, are attached as Appendix D. Results indicate that this virus is likely a precursor to the strain that was ultimately responsible for the near-extinction of the Ancients. If this is indeed the case, it may have been aboard the Destiny since the ship was launched. Alternatively, it may have been liberated following the full activations of areas of the ship that had previously been dormant. The likelihood that it came from the second obelisk planet is small…_

“Goddamnit,” Young sighed. “Did you know about this?” he asked Rush absently, still looking the report over.

There was no answer from Rush.

Young looked down. At some point in the last hour, Rush had relocated from the couch to the floor, where he was lying on his back with his feet propped up on the coffee table, staring at the ceiling with a blank look.

“Rush,” Young said.

Rush was listening to the harmonies of the Destiny’s shields, only peripherally aware of Young’s presence. Young could hear them faintly as well: wavering and alien, not quite animal- or bird-like, not quite like the humming of insects, but still somehow _alive_ — like a piano that played itself, Rush was thinking, though it wasn’t like a piano at all, more like an aurora borealis, charged particles striking an atmosphere, yes, an aurora that was singing to itself, high pitched chirps and hums, melodies and questions, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful—

“ _Rush_ ,” Young said, and toed at Rush’s shoulder.

Rush threw him an irritated glance— then paused, his eyes going unfocused. He said distantly, “We’re about to drop out of FTL.”

Sure enough, only a few seconds had passed before the sound of the FTL drive cut out and Young felt the peculiar sensation of his stomach getting left behind as they as they dropped into normal space.

He pulled out his radio. “Bridge,” he said. “Report.”

“Colonel, you’re not going to believe this,” Volker said, “but I’m looking at a seed ship right now.”

“I’ll be right there,” Young said, rising from the couch.

“Bring Rush with you,” Volker said.

“Right,” Young said, wincing. “I’ll… try to find him.”

“Yeah, good plan,” Volker said dryly, in a tone that suggested Young wasn’t fooling anybody.

//Not your best work,// Rush said. //If _Volker_ can see through it, then I assure you the others can as well.//

//At least I’m _trying_ to behave normally. Unlike you.//

//I’ve never behaved normally,// Rush said airily, getting to his feet. //It would be suspicious if I started.//

* * *

Within ten minutes, they had arrived at the bridge. Through the viewscreen, they could glimpse the long dark outline of the seed ship, hanging suspended as though in water. It was clearly battle-damaged: in several places, visible hull breaches had been covered by force fields, which flickered strangely against the blackness of space.

“What have we got, Eli?” Young asked.

“Well,” Eli said, “I can’t tell you much, because _amazingly_ their shields are still up at a minimal level, which prevents me from finding out much about the internal state of the ship. But judging by the exterior, I’d say they were in a pretty intense firefight.”

“How long ago are we talking about?”

Chloe spoke up: “The debris radius is consistent with a two- to six-month window.”

“So—“ Young strolled forward to the window, staring out at the dark bulk of the ship. “Is docking and boarding an option?”

“No,” Brody said.

“Maybe,” Eli said.

Rush said, “Of course it is.”

Young swept them with an exasperated look.

“The only way to dock with that ship would be to match their shield frequencies to ours,” Brody explained. “That would require continuous modulation of our shields in real time as the two energy fields merge.”

“That’s not an obstacle,” Rush said flatly.

“Um… why not?” Volker ventured.

“Because I’m telling you it’s not.”

“Right,” Brody said dubiously.

//Easy,// Young projected. //He doesn’t understand.//

“The pertinent question,” Rush said, his tone _slightly_ mollified, “is _should_ we do so. With its shields up, we can’t scan for life signs.”

Young rubbed his jaw. They needed the additional supplies, and a chance to look in the ship’s database wouldn’t hurt. But— “What’s your feeling?” he asked Rush in an undertone.

Rush didn’t look at him. He was gazing at the damaged ship. His weather was uneasy, with a dropping-pressure feeling, the kind that made the hair stand up on the back of your neck. //Normally I’d be all for a salvage mission, but…//

//But what?//

//Nothing. We should do it//

//But _what_ , Rush?//

// _Nothing._ // Rush’s face was set. He was resolutely ignoring the strange air of disruption that crawled around the edges of his thoughts.

//You have a bad feeling about this.//

//It’s not rational.//

Young looked at him. Rush’s brow was creased. He wasn’t normally hesitant. Jumpy, yes; absolutely. But hesitant? Never. Still, without some actual cause… “All right,” he said, turning back to the bridge. “Let’s do this, unless anyone has objections.”

No one did— until Chloe turned, tentatively and a little belatedly, to meet his eyes. “I don’t think we should go,” she said. “It doesn’t… feel right.”

Young and Rush locked eyes.

“What is it?” Young asked her.

“It’s not—“ She gestured helplessly. “It’s not anything specific. Something about it just feels _wrong_.”

Her words had heightened Rush’s distress. Young could tell he actively didn’t want to board the seed ship. Something about it was… _repelling_ him. But without any solid basis for suspicion, he couldn’t help thinking that with Chloe and Rush, there was the potential that what was bothering them was some weird geometric irregularity, or like— last year, Rush had thrown a fit become some busted air recirculator was buzzing at what Rush insisted was the wrong pitch.

//It was 450 hertz,// Rush said defensively, picking up the thought. //It was unbearable. But I agree; we can’t base our decisions on intuition. We shouldn't pass up this opportunity.//

“We’ll take precautions,” Young said out loud— to reassure Chloe, Rush, and perhaps, just a little bit, himself.

He reached for his radio. “Lieutenant Scott. We’re going to be boarding the seed ship shortly. Start assembling an advance team and meet me at the docking port.”

“And how is this docking happening again?” Brody asked.

Eli said, “Ask the ship-whisperer over there.”

“Just initiate the protocol,” Rush snapped. He was still feeling shudderingly anxious.

“If you’re wrong, and you can’t match the frequencies, then when the shields collide we could be looking at a _hydrogen bomb_ style explosion,” Volker said. “I, for one, would like to know exactly what your secret plan is.

Rush didn’t answer. He _couldn’t_ answer, Young realized. This was one of those things he’d been talking about, so natural to him that it was impossible to explain. Volker might as well have demanded that he explain how to move a limb. Rush was struggling to think of anything to say at all. And now the whole bridge crew was staring at him, which he hated, and he had backed up inconspicuously so that he could grip the forward rail with one hand.

“You guys,” Eli said quickly. “Seriously. How does he do _any_ of this stuff? He’s linked to the ship. It’s going to be fine.”

Brody said bleakly, “Famous last words.”

“Thank you, Eli,” Rush said haughtily. His grip on the rail had relaxed. //Thanks so much for your support,// he shot at Young icily.

//What was I going to say? I don’t know how the hell you do this stuff.//

//Just _order_ them to initiate the docking protocol. Obviously.//

//Yeah, because that’s worked out so well for me in the past.//

//You mean to say that you’re actually capable of learning? Paleolithic man progresses.//

“Okay,” Young said, ignoring the comment. “Let’s do this. Rush, you ready?”

Rush nodded fractionally. //I don’t need an interface,// he said.

//How about using one just to, you know, make everyone more comfortable with this whole maneuver?//

//This is going to be difficult enough without _pretending_ to do it via computer.//

“Okay. Go when you’re ready,” Young said.

Their trajectory changed so that they were heading directly toward the seed ship. Rush turned and reached forward, closing both hands around the rail. He was listening to the whistling song that the Destiny’s shields were singing, high and faint and harmonic and halfway towards a kind of chirp. As the seed ship got nearer, he could hear its shields as well, and they were singing a different song, but one that he understood. There were patterns in those songs: inquisitive, lonely, defensive.

As he listened, the Destiny reached out for him.

Rush heard as the ship heard, as though he were a ship-like creature, and that was because he had become a ship-like creature. His mind had spread throughout the ship, inhabiting all the dark places that made themselves ready for his presence, where the circuits and crystals and wiring and registers seemed to clap their hands. The ship _pulled_ , wanting more, wanting to share what it was hearing-feeling-thinking-sensing, and Young felt sweat break out on his brow as he worked to keep Rush from simply slipping away with it.

“I thought there was going to be frequency modulation happening,” Brody said, wary.

“It _is_ happening,” Eli said, sounding as if he didn’t quite believe his own words. “Check it out.”

The science team turned towards the projected display where red and blue wave functions were moving progressively ever-more-into-sync. Young was vaguely conscious that their motion matched something he was aware of as rising and falling tones that wanted to resolve in chords, but it was harder and harder for him to see anything. His vision was whiting out at the edges. He was trying to hold Rush— or at least most of Rush, or at least _enough_ of Rush to call it Rush— into one whole coherent shape, but it was like trying to hold a block of ice in his hands when it insisted on dissolving, when all the laws of physics wanted to make it be other things.

He had to lean forwards against the rail, next to Rush. He could hardly stay upright anymore. The ship liked that Rush was modulating the harmonies; it was like Rush was singing; and of course Rush _was_ singing, because Rush was the ship, even though Young was kicking and fighting at all of the thousand places where the ship was thinning him out and trying to spin him into thread, sewing him into itself like he was nothing but fiber; and Young was ripping and ripping and ripping at it, but it kept _going_ , and he was tired, and he was going to pass out—

Abruptly Rush became aware of the herculean effort that Young was exerting on his behalf. Rush shifted his weight, flexing his left foot so that bone scraped against bone remotely and nascent scar tissue twisted painfully. Part of him tore itself back from the ship, startled by the reminder that it had a physical body.

Young was able to draw a deep breath. It didn’t take much longer for the shields to find their optimal resolution, a strange and high-pitched but harmonious final chord, and then Rush was able to focus on his vague and half-formed sense of self, helping Young to draw him out of the ship and back together. It was a good twenty seconds before Rush was anywhere near what Young would call _him_ , and even then Young could feel the ship whining at him, wanting his attention, so that it took nearly all of his focus not to surrender once more.

//What’s going on?// Young asked, not hiding his alarm. //I thought things had gotten easier. Our radius is better; our connection is healing. Why is the ship—//

//The past few days have been better because—// Rush hesitated, looking evasive, or troubled, or maybe— maybe just tired as hell. //The AI has been— protecting me to some degree. But if I purposefully integrate into Destiny’s systems, there’s nothing it can do.//

//I almost couldn’t keep you here,// Young said.

Rush looked away.

//How’s your foot?//

“I barely feel it,” Rush murmured aloud, earning him an odd glance from Chloe.

//Yeah, I know,// Young shot at him, exasperated. //I don’t think that’s _good_.// He sighed. //I hate to say it, but torturing the hell out of yourself has actually turned out to be a helpful strategy.//

//I’ve always assumed that was the primary purpose of the bolts.// Rush flexed his fingers absently, causing himself a faint shiver of pain. //Efficient and effective.//

“Dr. Rush?” Chloe asked cautiously.

Rush’s mouth tightened. “Everything’s fine, Chloe,” he said. His voice was quiet and flat.

* * *

The hallways of the seed ship were lit by emergency lighting that flickered erratically here and there, creating a gray and unpredictable darkness. Changes in pressure as the boarding teams opened different sections of the ship caused cold air to whistle past at intervals. That was one of the theories about ghosts, Young recalled— that people experienced things they called ghosts because of changes of pressure, or because of stray gusts of air, or because of the wrong frequency of sound. He’d read an article about it. It seemed a lot less ridiculous to him now; the ship felt haunted. He couldn’t bring himself to take his hand off his M16.

They’d been careful. They’d scanned for life forms, and found no life forms. They’d checked for life support, and found life support. Everything was fine. It was— fine.

“So on a scale of one to creepy,” Eli whispered, “where one is an adorable baby rabbit and ten is the upside-down spider-walk from The Exorcist, how is everybody else feeling about this—“

“Shh,” Young said, throwing him a pointed look.

“—totally normal, totally non-creepy ship?”

Young caught of glimpse of Chloe’s face as they passed under a line of lighting. She was very pale in the blue glow. He wished that Eli would stop talking.

And he wished Rush had stayed aboard the Destiny. Rush had insisted on being the fourth member of their team. “I thought you couldn’t leave the ship,” Young had said suspiciously, and Rush had said, “I can leave the _physical confines_ ; I just can’t get very far away,” and Young had asked, “How far away can you get?” Rush hadn’t answered, of course, and then Young had said, “What happens if you get too far away?” Rush hadn’t answered that either. So now he was prowling the hallway, his weather ozone-scented and dread-laced. He didn’t like that the ship was indifferent to his presence, that in fact it seemed to actively resent him in some way, and that he couldn’t feel it with his mind, which made it seem—

Dead. Inhuman.

Their team’s destination was the control interface, room, where Rush seemed briefly unnerved by the fact that the door didn’t open, and no monitors came alive for him. He moved to assess the ship’s CPU while Eli downloaded the database and Chloe searched through the ship’s logs, looking for any hint of the battle that had done so much damage.

Young stood in the doorway, looking out into the silent dark halls and feeling Rush’s sense of _wrongness_ inexorably ratchet up, until finally—

Something hit him that he could barely identify as terror, so purely immediate and physical was it, so indistinguishable from an almost nauseating urge to run.

A datapad clattered to the floor behind him.

Young turned to see Chloe standing as though she’d been frozen, her hands stretched out in front of her as though to ward something off.

Her enormous eyes were fixed on Rush, who was staring at her and echoing her horror, pulsing it into Young’s mind in hammering, blunt-weapon blows. “Chloe,” Rush whispered. “Don’t panic. _Do not_ panic. Don’t—“ He was speaking, Young realized, in no small part to himself.

“What’s going on?” Young hissed sharply.

“They’re here,” Chloe whispered. “The ones that changed me. They’re close.”

Several things became clear to Young at once. The first was that the seed ship had been a trap, an attempt to gain access to the Destiny by ensuring that the bulk of its crew was on board the seed ship. The second was that their tactical position— isolated, in the dark, and thinly spread— was so poor as to be indefensible. The third was that all the aliens had to do was undock the Destiny from the seed ship, and they would be cut off. Permanently.

“No,” Rush whispered fiercely. “They may try it, but no one— _no one_ — is capable of cutting me off from Destiny.”

His eyes met Young’s.

Young believed him.

“They’re very close,” Chloe whispered. Her voice was barely audible.

Young felt Rush focus on the headache that had been slowly rising to prominence and force himself to stare into the maw of it— setting aside, with the clinical coolness of a surgeon, the sensation of a knife digging right into his brain where he was screaming and already wounded and writhing. He was trying to understand how many of them there might be, but he could not force the sensation to cohere, no matter how hard he dug in.

“How many are there?” he asked Chloe.

“Five,” Chloe whispered. “Maybe six. All in a group. Close. Very close.”

A short burst of distant gunfire caused all of them to jump.

“This is Greer.” Young’s radio crackled, and he jerked the volume down. “We are taking fire. I repeat, we are _taking fire.”_

Young pulled out his radio and broadcast on all channels. “This is Colonel Young,” he said rapidly. “All teams fall back to the Destiny. We have confirmed enemy contact. The Destiny may have been boarded. Radio chatter to a minimum.”

“This room only has one exit,” Rush hissed at him “We need to get out of here.”

Young was already performing a tactical assessment. They had no cover. Their group included three untrained civilians, one of whom was injured, two of whom were panicking, and all of whom were unarmed. The likelihood of them making it back to the ship was slim at best.

//I am not _panicking_ ,// Rush said. Everything in his thoughts was radiating panic. // _You’re_ panicking. Pull yourself together.//

Young ignored him. He pulled out his handgun and chambered a round, handing it to Eli. “You’ve got our six,” he said shortly. “Don’t fire unless you’re sure you’re going to hit something.”

Eli nodded, pale.

“Chloe,” Young said. “You’re with Rush.”

They were the two most vulnerable members of the team, and Young and Eli would have to protect them. Plus, they seemed to reassure each other. They were doing it now. Chloe had pulled Rush’s arm over her shoulder, ready to support him as they moved fast down the halls, and he was whispering something in her ear as she nodded, white-faced.

Young didn’t eavesdrop to find out what he had said.

* * *

They moved silently through the dark halls. It was an odd, stilted procession, much, _much_ slower than Young would have preferred. Rush was limping heavily, leaning on Chloe, who was staring out at nothing, her face disturbed.

“Behind us,” she whispered abruptly, breaking the stillness.

Young could see an intersecting corridor one hundred feet in front of them— something that would offer minimal cover, at least.

“Go,” he whispered to Eli, gesturing. “Secure the cross-corridor.”

Eli nodded, lifting his chin, and stepped out ahead of Chloe and Rush.

Young dropped behind them, eyes sweeping the shadows for movement. But he heard them before he saw them: a soft fluttering sound like the broad-winged water bugs that you got down in the American South, too big and too chitinous in a way that triggered something primal in the bloodstream, something that _did not want to be touched_. He brought his rifle up to his shoulder. He and Chloe and Rush were close to the intersection.

Thirty feet.

Twenty-five.

Then the aliens came into view: six of them solidifying, long and skeletal and too-many-jointed. Their eyes were a flat and insectoid black. They were already pulling weapons, and Young wanted to shout to Chloe and Rush to run, but— they couldn’t. Rush couldn’t. The words died in his mouth.

At his back, maddeningly, the two of them _slowed_ instead— Chloe had half-turned to look back over her shoulder, her face a mask of terror.

“ _Chloe_ ,” Rush snapped, dragging her forward.

Two of the aliens switched weapons, holstering their guns and pulling out something else. Something smaller. Young had a feeling he didn’t want to find out what.

He opened fire, feeling the relief of the rifle’s kickback against his shoulder, its blunt and satisfying power as it spewed out round after round. In the dark, it was hard to aim, but he didn’t really have to; in the confined space, with an automatic weapon, he was able to take out three of the six in his first burst. That bought enough time for Chloe and Rush to duck around the corner and join Eli in the cross-corridor.

Young had just begun his second burst when he felt something hit him square in the chest. He staggered slightly with the pure force of the impact, his finger slipping briefly from the trigger before he got his grip back. There was no point in looking down; he was dead or he wasn’t, and at that exact moment it didn’t matter which. All he had to do was keep firing until the enemy stopped firing. So, grimly, that was what he did.

Two more of the aliens went down before the last retreated. Then Young could duck around the corner, breathing hard.

Rush was waiting for him, and before Young had even made it into the corridor, Rush grabbed his jacket, shoving him against the wall, running his hands over Young’s chest, manically searching for something. His fingers closed around a projectile buried in Young’s kevlar vest, and he yanked it out viciously.

It was a dart. A small bead of liquid welled from it, glinting in the wildly flickering light.

//Tell me this didn’t penetrate your vest,// Rush demanded.

//It didn’t.//

//Thank _God_.// Rush tossed the dart out of the way.

“They want us _alive?_ ” Eli said, horrified.

Rush said bleakly, //I shouldn’t have said her name. They recognized her. And me, I suspect. One got away?//

Young nodded. His gaze had gone to Chloe, who was crouched against the wall, tear tracks glistening on her expressionless face and her hands covering her mouth. He wished that Eli hadn't said anything.

Rush crossed to Chloe and held out a hand out to her. Very gently, almost formally, he said, “Shall we?”

She stood, a little shaky, and pulled his arm back over her shoulder.

As they moved out, Young was thinking quickly, ruthlessly. It had been a mistake to let the sixth alien escape. It was likely that Chloe and Rush were now high priority targets. The easy progress they were making through the ship suggested the aliens were gathering elsewhere. And, unfortunately, a location presented itself: the docking port was the only point of egress from the ship. It was the perfect place for a flanking maneuver: narrow, no cover. Young’s team was moving slowly, meaning that the aliens had plenty of time to amass there. If they couldn’t find another exit, they were… not dead. _Worse than dead_ , Rush’s mind suggested wordlessly.

Because Rush was also searching for a solution. His mind was blurring slightly together with Young’s, the breathtaking speed at which Rush could think blending with Young’s tactical evaluation until it wasn’t clear who was generating ideas, or in whose head. Finally—

//Yes,// Young projected, looking back at Rush. “Let’s try it,” he mouthed silently.

“Did you guys just make a secret plan?” Eli whispered.

Young held out the datapad, pointing to the seed ship’s port shuttle.

“The _shuttle?”_ Eli’s whisper grew higher-pitched. “Are you _crazy?_ We don’t even know if it’s operational!”

“The docking port is not an option,” Young whispered back.

“They’re gathering there,” Chloe confirmed in a small voice. “Waiting for us.”

Eli shut his mouth.

They continued to move through the dim, dead corridors. The flickering lights and gusts of air that had seemed supernatural now seemed to hide too-long fingers and crouching figures, the specters of very real threat.

They had nearly made it to the shuttle when Chloe suddenly stopped, stiffening. “Two groups,” she hissed. “Coming up fast from behind and—“ her brow furrowed— “to our left.”

Again Young heard them before he saw them, that distinctive and hair-raising noise; now louder, like wings thudding against a window, which only made the sense of horror more intense.

Chloe was dragging Rush into a near-run, her breath coming like sobs, and Young could not tell how much of his fear was his own. It didn’t matter. he had to cut it down brutally within his mind, because he could not afford it. Fear was clutter; fear was distraction; fear made your limbs weaker; fear was an animal instinct, and he was not an animal (he could hear a training instructor barking distantly), so he did not need fear.

Just as he entered the intersection point of two corridors, the aliens appeared abruptly from the left.

Young opened fire immediately. A few short bursts slowed them down, and he pushed Chloe and Rush ahead of him as he took down two of the aliens, then four more. There was nothing inside him, no fear, no worry, nothing but the pressure of the trigger and the kickback of the gun.

Ahead and to his right, a shot rang out— a handgun. An M9. Eli. Young turned and saw the second group of aliens, skittering close on their strangely-jointed limbs, moving fast from behind. Eli brought one of them down on his third shot, but he wasn’t going to be able to take them all out.

They had plasma weapons, but they weren’t firing. Which meant—

He felt a dart bury itself in his right shoulder.

It didn’t matter; it _couldn’t_ matter. He kept firing, taking two more of them down as he pulled the dart out with his left hand.

“Eli!” he shouted, waiting for Eli to get out in front so he could follow Chloe and Rush around the corner. He was firing in a broad spread, his aim deteriorating. By the time he made it around the corner, he could barely hang on to his gun. Numbness and tingling were spreading outwards from his shoulder: towards his hand, up his neck, towards his chest.

He locked eyes with Rush, whose mind had become a muffled shriek.

“Keep firing,” Rush said harshly to Eli, taking Young’s gun and lowering it to the floor.

“Oh, crap,” Eli breathed, as he saw Rush trying to control Young’s slow slide down the wall to the floor. “ _Shit._ ” He fired off one unsteady shot, then another— his aim wild and not doing much good.

Rush, his thoughts flying apart, was tearing off Young’s outer jacket and kevlar vest. He yanked the darts out of the vest and pulled it over his own head. Even with the straps adjusted, it was much too big for him. For some reason that struck Young. He felt dumbly like he should apologize for it.

“You two drag him to the shuttle,” Rush said tightly to Chloe and Eli. “I’ll cover you. Once you get there, run the startup sequence.”

Young’s vision was fading, and he couldn’t move. But he thought deliriously that he was glad Rush was here; bizarrely glad that his life was in Rush’s hands— mostly because no one else was crazy enough to try the shit Rush tried. No one else had so little give-up in them. It was like God had taken it all out of Rush to distribute to other people. Which most of the time was, truthfully, annoying as hell. But _fuck_ was he glad of it right now, as he watched Rush pick up his automatic rifle.

//Stay with me as long as you can,// Rush projected.

Nothing in Rush’s mind was making very much sense to Young. Young figured that was because he was losing consciousness, and so everything was ceasing to make much sense. He tried to hang on for Rush, for the thin flicker of Rush he could feel as the darkness thickened in his head, past the point when he understood why he was doing it or what it meant to hang on. He knew only that he had to close himself around that ember inside him, that he _could not_ let it go out, that he could not _let go_ , but his body would not obey, and he was sinking, sinking, and someone was screaming, or not screaming, but thinking in an agonized, frantic, crescendoing shout, and Young felt the ember slipping through his fingers like melting ice and what a strange image he did not know why he had thought of that—


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a chunk of formatting in here that's designed to optimally display on non-mobile devices.

Young had spent a lot of time in his life regaining consciousness. Probably more than was medically advised. He could never get used to that strange moment between being nothing and being someone, when you were _something_ but _no one_ , or at least no one _yet_. For a half-second you were aware of the world only as input, not as something you were part of. He was amazed that basic training hadn’t tried to beat that half-second out of him. Maybe they just hadn’t been able to get anyone to sign off on actually knocking recruits on the head. But it was kind of peaceful, not being anyone. If you weren’t anyone, you didn’t have to worry about—

–the fact that you couldn’t _move_ , not even to open your _eyes_ , and you couldn’t feel the other half of your _brain_ except as a very distant sense of a semi-coherent presence thinly spread throughout the dark, which was enough to make anyone panic, especially when he couldn’t _reach out_ to what he realized, as real awareness returned to him, was Rush, Rush maybe lost in the ship, or hurt, because, oh, God, the memory of Rush holding his automatic rifle—

“Eli,” Chloe said from somewhere nearby, sounding exasperated. “We have to _focus._ ”

They sounded like they weren’t in any imminent danger, at least.

“Right,” Eli said. “Right. No. You’re right. Focus. But seriously, if there’s anyone here who needs to focus, it’s really not me. It's Rush. _Rush._ Come on, man.”

Young could hear him snapping his fingers, presumably in Rush’s direction. In Rush’s _face_ , maybe, and there was a thought— if he’d been able to, he would have smiled, even given the direness of the present situation. He could just about imagine the kind of response Eli would normally for get. And sure enough—

“ _Eod amicie, infans conneritom,”_ Rush snapped.

Young felt almost nauseated by the intensity of his relief. Not English, but at least _language_ , rather than just a head full of circuits.

“Did you catch all of that?” Chloe asked. “The end part sounded really rude.”

“I think it was something like _stop doing that, you ridiculous child_.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Chloe said, sounding worried. “Why is he all— Ancient-y? Is it because Colonel Young is—?”

With a concerted effort, Young finally managed to open his eyes, just in time to blurrily watch as Chloe gestured haltingly at him. She and Eli were silhouetted against the viewscreen of the shuttle. He seemed to be lying on the floor a few feet behind them.

So they had made it. They were safe.

“You  _know_ about that?" Eli asked in disbelief. "You're not supposed to know about that. What do you know about that?

Chloe was quiet for a long moment. "Not much. Just that they're— connected now. Because of the ship."

"Rush  _told_ you that? Wait, Rush  _talks_ to you? Like, actually  _about_ stuff? Stuff that  _matters?_ "

"Are you jealous?" Chloe asked, sounding amused.

"No. Obviously. Of course not. No. What does he talk to you about?"

Chloe sighed. “Eli, we don’t have time for this.”

“Actually, I’m pretty sure we do. We’re parked underneath the FTL drive, we have no weapons, we have no communications, and Destiny’s not going anywhere, so—“

“We could jump to FTL at literally _any second.”_

“I’m pretty sure that Destiny’s not going _anywhere_ without Rush on board,” Eli said, sounding a little unsettled. “Literally. Boots to deck, if you know what I mean. They’ll be lucky if they even have minimal power.”

Chloe was silent for a moment. “Really?”

“Really. So we have some time.”

Young could make out just enough to see Chloe turn to watch Rush. She reached out and straightened the cuff of his jacket, in what seemed like an absentminded move. "It's private," she said at last. "What we talk about. Not secrets. Just... stuff. You wouldn't understand."

"Right," Eli said, disgruntled. "Of course. Why would I understand."

"Eli..."

"Right. No. Of course. I get it."

"It's mostly math, anyway."

"Right. Because why would I understand math."

"Do you really think this is the right time for you to get all sulky? Shouldn't we be, you know, making some kind of plan?"

"A plan to do  _what?_ Without Colonel Young, Rush's brain gets, like, sucked into Destiny. Look at him; he's being a spaceship. He doesn't even know we're here. Otherwise he'd be  _really_ mad that I was talking about him."

"Yes," Chloe said severely. "He would."

"So unless some of your private  _stuff_ involves knowing how to speak Destiny-ese, he's not going to be able to help us."

“No,” Chloe murmured. “I figured it was pretty much up to us.”

That was a little worrying. But Young was distracted by the realization that he could feel the cold of the deck plating, and the pain where the dart had hit him, and the faint beginnings of a headache.

Emboldened, he tried to reach Rush. His efforts felt simple and clumsy, the equivalent of standing on the top of a building and waving to get the attention of a passing plane, but something in Rush’s thinned-out consciousness sharpened slightly, prickling and drawing itself together in interest. It recognized Young, and brightened under the weight of his attention. Young, figuring this was a good sign, began to gently pry it loose from its settings.

For the first time, however, Rush pulled back from him. Or not _from_ him, but _with_ him, clinging onto Young’s presence and drawing him forwards, inviting him into the alien dark of the ship. Young resisted, alarmed and slightly repelled by the idea of going down into that chirping, whistling, monstrous pit. He did not _belong_ there. Human things did not belong there. But Rush tugged insistently at him, projecting a faint sense of exasperation.

//All right,// Young said trepidatiously. //Don’t make me regret this.//

He shut his eyes and let go.

At once he was hurtling forwards, too far _too far_ and tearing _loose_ from his body in a way that was _not supposed to happen_ and there was a blur of something vast and dark and consuming like the negative image of the stars running faster than light— and then Rush was wrapped around him steadying him but it was not really Rush but then he blinked and it was Rush and he was _looking_ at Rush, but not the Rush that he was used to, small in an oversized military jacket, shaggy-haired, and weary-eyed behind his crooked glasses frames. This Rush was neat and precise and somehow undamaged, clad in dark jeans and a white collared shirt.

“—Hi,” Young said cautiously. He pushed himself to his elbows and looked around.

They were still in the shuttle, but _not_ in the shuttle. Chloe and Eli were nowhere to be seen, and the light was strange somehow, golden like the late hours of summer. It was vaguely disorientating.

“Hello,” Rush said, leaning back in his chair. He had his feet propped up on the science station and was looking tremendously pleased with himself. “Welcome to Destiny.”

Young frowned at him, not comprehending.

Rush clarified, “We’re with the ship. How do you like this interface? I made it for you.”

“You… made it?” Young repeated.

“I got the idea from the AI,” Rush said. He paused. His eyes slid away for a moment. “In a manner of speaking. She’s used a similar construct, and I needed a way to talk to you.”

“Why did you need an interface to talk to me?” Young got clumsily to his feet. It occurred to him that there was no pain anywhere in his body. Even the lasting ache in his knee was gone. He looked down, briefly disconcerted, then back at Rush.

“The unaltered human mind can’t interpret direct input from the ship,” Rush said. “Like this, I can interpret it for you, ensuring that you’re… protected.”

Young glanced around critically. “So you decided to stick us in the shuttle? With, what, slightly better lighting? When you can build any interface you want?”

“What’s wrong with the shuttle?” Rush frowned.

“Nothing.” Young shrugged, fighting a smile. “It’s… a little boring, maybe.”

“It’s not psychologically revealing,” Rush said pointedly.

Young rolled his eyes. “God, you’re paranoid.”

“Look,” Rush said huffily, “unlike you, _as usual_ , I am extremely busy right now.”

“I’m sure you are,” Young said, the smile leaving his face. “What’s going on?”

“The most worrying thing our uninvited guests have done is rig the communications array to broadcast a signal designed to alert neighboring ships to our presence, presumably with the intent of notifying reinforcements. I’m currently suppressing that signal, but there was a three-minute window when it was broadcasting live.”

“Okay,” Young said. “What else?”

“They’ve got barely any power to work with, so that’s making their lives difficult—“

Rush couldn’t, Young thought wearily, give a military report to save his life. “Rush,” he said. “Numbers, please. Locations.”

“I don’t know. The sensors aren’t picking them up. They’ve made some kind of modification since the last time they boarded us, the probable purpose of which is to prevent our tactic of venting them into space. They’re likely carrying transmitters capable of broadcasting some kind of interference pattern.”

“Dammit. We’ve got to get back to the ship. Physically.”

“I agree, but I’m afraid that any such maneuver will have to wait for the moment.”

“Why?” Young asked sharply.

Rush gave him a look that implied Young was being particularly stupid. “First of all, you’re currently lying paralyzed on the floor of the shuttle. Second, I’m more-or-less absorbed into the ship. Third— allow me to illustrate.”

The strange lighting of the shuttle dimmed, and Young could see the ghost-like figures of Eli and Chloe, as though they were projecting in from another dimension.

“Eli,” Chloe was saying. “We have to help them. It’s been forty-five minutes.”

Eli made a helpless gesture. “We have no idea what’s happening on Destiny! Plus, we have two injured people. Or one injured person and one sanity-challenged person. Who, to be fair, is actually also injured. I vote we wait and let the cavalry take care of things.”

“ _Eli,”_ Chloe said. “We _are_ the cavalry.”

“Okay, maybe, in principle yes. But if we’re the cavalry, then we’re, like, the _worst_ cavalry in the history of all cavalries. We barely have any ammo left, and I don’t think we can take these guys on without lots and lots of bullets. Also, what the _heck_ are we supposed to do about the colonel and Rush?”

Chloe made a short, intense gesture. “You don’t understand,” she said fiercely. “We have to do something. They’ll tear through the crew. _They’ll tear through the crew._ You _can’t_ understand; you don’t _know_ —“

“—Okay,” Eli said hastily. “Okay, but let’s at least try to make a plan.”

The two of them faded out again, until they were entirely absent.

Rush raised his eyebrows. “It’s a bizarre mixture of adorable and terrifying, is it not? I suggest that we wait until you’re at least able to oversee them. In fact, you’d best go back and prevent them from doing anything premature. When _you’re_ ready, as in _not paralyzed_ , tell them to proceed to the port side of the ship. There’s a cargo bay about three quarters of the way towards the bow. I can open it and pressurize it when necessary. And get them working on a way to modify the sensors to track our guests.”

“When do you want to be pulled out of the ship?” Young asked.

“I don’t think you should attempt it until we return to Destiny. The ship is— anxious, and it’s got an—“ He broke off, glancing away and crossing his arm across his chest. “An unusually good hold on me. I’m not inclined to fight it at the moment, as I’m actively suppressing outgoing communications.”

“Are you going to be able to keep suppressing that signal when I pull you out?”

Rush frowned, looking vague. “I’m— not sure—” he said uncertainly. He seemed troublingly confused for a moment. “There’s a possibility that—“ After a long pause, seemed to shake himself. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

“Right,” Young said slowly, not terribly reassured by this.

“It’s too bad we can’t separate,” Rush said. “You could leave me on the shuttle.”

“There is no way I would _ever_ consider doing that.”

Rush gave him a skeptical look.

“Oh, stop,” Young said, exasperated. “All right, I should get back before Chloe and Eli do something…” He paused, searching for a diplomatic word.

“Ill-advised?” Rush suggested.

“Yeah. Ill-advised.”

Rush nodded, tipping his chair forward and removing his boots from the console. He looked up, meeting Young’s eyes for the first time. “Are you all right? I can’t tell for certain.”

Young shifted under his gaze. There was something in the way Rush was looking at him— oddly soft, and intense, and searching, with a kind of yearning that Young didn’t understand. He wished he could read Rush’s thoughts, but they were embedded in the ship, being ship-thoughts, and the few that weren’t were fractured and obscure to him. He felt a brief flare of— something, maybe jealousy at the ship for getting to have those thoughts, at getting to have this neat, soft, unscattered version of Rush.

“I’m fine,” he said, hoping it was true.

Rush didn’t say anything. He was still looking at Young, and for a moment Young, flushing unaccountably, found that had to look away. It was too much; he didn’t— know how to respond; he didn’t know what to feel or think or do; it was the opposite of that half-second not-quite-conscious awareness, because everything about the world seemed to peel away and he was excruciatingly aware of the experience of being in his body under the electric pressure of Rush’s gaze.

He cleared his throat.

“Shut your eyes,” Rush said at last. “I have to dismantle the interface, and you’re not going to be bale to interpret any residual sensory input you might get. It will be unsettling if you try to watch it.”

Young shut his eyes. For a moment the noise of the Destiny rushed past him, humming and whispering in languages that were beyond his understanding, strangely animal in its inhuman intent. He could feel the dark bulk of the ship out there, waiting, being pushed apart for him to move through it. And then it was—

—gone, and he was in _pain_ , the air scraping along his nerve endings, his shoulder beaten down by an almost unendurable weight, the deck icy beneath him and the light battering his retinas. His breath hissed between his teeth.

“— thinks you're the boy genius,” Chloe was saying, “so, you know, if _my_ plan's so terrible, then do your boy genius thing.”

“Right. My boy genius thing. So we know we can’t land at the normal docking sites because–“ Eli broke off and turned, having seen, out of the corner of his eye, Young’s minute flinch. “ _Sweet_ ,” he said, getting to his feet and going to Young’s side. “Hey. Are you okay? Can you move? Can you talk? Do you know where you are? Probably that’s a no, actually, because you didn’t really see how we got here. Can you talk, though? We made it to the shuttle. How’s your arm? Are you poisoned? Two blinks for yes, three blinks for no.”

“Eli,” Young gritted out. “Settle down.”

Chloe, who had joined Eli beside Young, gave Young a wan smile. “You can’t move, can you?” she asked.

“It’s— coming back to me,” Young said. He tried clenching and unclenching the fingers of his left hand. He couldn’t move his right arm at all, and he noticed that a makeshift bandage had been wrapped around his bicep. It didn’t seem to have done much good.

“You’ve lost a lot of blood,” Chloe said, catching his glance. “We haven’t been able to stop it.”

“Great.” Young shut his eyes for a second and opened them again. It was difficult for him to accurately assess his physical condition, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it right now. So: his physical condition was needs-to-be-ignored-for-the-time-being. He would have to push through. There was no other choice. “Report,” he said.

“We’re currently sitting on Destiny’s hull, about two hundred feet from the FTL drive,” Eli said. “We’re not sure how to get back on board, but we’re working on it.”

“Rush has it covered,” Young said.

“So, um, I”m thinking that maybe he doesn’t? He’s gotten progressively more—“ Eli trailed off, waving his hand in a vague motion.

Young shook his head. “He’s okay.”

“Really? Because he, uh, doesn’t seem okay. At all.”

Young looked over at Rush. Rush’s eyes were unfocused. His hands were gripping the edge of the monitor bank, as though he weren’t merely seated at the station but hanging on— hanging on off the side of a mountain, trying to claw his way back up. He was having to fight extremely hard to keep even this much of himself out of the ship.

“He’s okay,” Young said again. “He’ll be better when we get back to the Destiny. What’s the status of communications?”

“Our creepy friends are broadcasting some kind of electromagnetic interference,” Eli told him. “I can’t get anything but static. And the shuttle’s communications are down.”

“Of course they are.” Young sighed. “What happened after I passed out?”

“Um, you missed what was probably the most badass Rush moment _ever_ ,” Eli said. “I wish I’d had a kino. Because, you know, when you think of Rush, or when _I_ do, the word _badass_ does not necessarily come to mind, but— it was awesome. He literally stood in front of me and Chloe while we dragged you to the shuttle. He took out all of the remaining alien guys. It was like some action hero shit.”

“Sorry I missed it,” Young said, suppressing a smile.

“Me too,” Eli said. “Since no one’s going to believe me, except for Chloe, because she was there.”

Young let the two of them keep regaling him with the details of their escape, because it was clearly improving their spirits, and because he needed the time to regain the ability to move. Once they had run out of things to tell him about, he put them to work on the problem of modifying the sensors to detect whatever type of interference the aliens had begun to employ.

At the same time, even though both Chloe and Eli gave the impression of high spirits, he could tell that they were both deeply unsettled. Maybe it was the proximity of the invaders, which Chloe was still vaguely sensing. Maybe it was the presence of Rush, who had never before seemed so obviously _altered_. Young was used to the idea of Rush’s enmeshment with the ship, and even he found Rush’s empty-eyed expression hard to take. It had to be worse for Eli and Chloe. Especially for Chloe, who relied so much on Rush.

Half an hour after Young had regained consciousness, he was finally able to push himself to his feet. As soon as he did, he was forced to grab onto the nearest console to keep from losing his balance as the room spun. The was the blood loss, he guessed, but it— would get better. He just had to tactically account for it, like the merciless throbbing in his shoulder. Make a tactical note of it and move on.

“Okay, kids,” he said to Chloe and Eli, trying to project more strength than he actually felt. “We’re going to head down the port side of the ship. About three quarters of the way down, there’s a cargo bay that Rush is going to open and then pressurize for us.”

Eli frowned, glancing at Rush. “And he… knows this?“

“It’s his plan.”

“Well, does his plan involve keeping us off Destiny’s sensors? Because otherwise this is going to be a real short trip.”

“I’m sure it does.”

“Did he actually say that? Because sometimes he—“

“Eli,” Young said. “Let’s go.”

It didn’t take long to reach the cargo bay that Rush had selected. The doors opened as the shuttle approached, then sealed behind them, allowing the bay to pressurize.

Chloe and Eli watched Rush uncertainly as the shuttle docked.

“He doesn’t seem better,” Chloe said, sounding worried. “I thought he was going to be normal once we got back to the ship.”

“Just… give me a minute,” Young said.

He stepped closer to Rush, still feeling unsteady. He wasn’t sure that he was going to be able to do this. In fact, he was pretty sure he _wasn’t_ going to be able to do this— at least not without a considerable assist from Rush.

He put a hand on Rush’s shoulder, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes.

At once he was feeling out the edges of Rush, mapping them in the ship’s formless darkness, and mentally pulling at them, trying to pry them loose. It was something between a kind of coaxing and physical action— he could feel the pain and weariness in his limbs, as though he were attempting to _actually_ pry Rush’s fingers loose from something he was gripping (something that was also gripping him; a cliff’s-edge that gripped back out of fear that the climber would leave it), but he was also communicating, somehow, with those little threads of Rush, convince them that they wanted to give up the solidity and safety of the ship. He was aware that the nascent Rush-consciousness was trying to help him, digging into him with all of its strength and trying to resist the ship’s entropic persuasion. But it was more absorbed into the ship than it had ever been, in some places barely perceptible as other than the Destiny. It was more… _ship-like_ , somehow. It had ceased to be clearly Rush. And Rush was struggling to _stop being_ the ship; he was confused, or parts of him were confused, and he found that confusing, and he wasn’t yet enough of a person to be certain of who he was, and he _needed_ Young to hold him together, and Young couldn’t do it; his vision was graying out; his chest was burning, and Rush was flexing his foot, trying to hurt himself enough that he could remember how to be Rush, but it _wasn’t_ enough; it wasn’t going to be enough—

And then—

All the little nervous strings of Rush tuned themselves, seemed to vibrate at the same pitch, finding in unison a common _resolution_ , and Rush or the whole

Rushship _Fatos_ circuitsregister _coiratornauisensimulsemper_ wirescrystalsAIconsciousness _NEEDED_ apposition it was the ONLY course of action and so and so ittheyall _MOVED_ towards alignment and it moved INTO YOUNG’S HEAD and it was IN YOUNG’S HEAD and it was TEARING THROUGH HIM and it was 

1700Hz1700 Hz1700 Hz

                                   50 Hz?50 Hz?50 Hz?50 Hz?50 Hz?

2100 Hz1500zHz2100 Hz

 _quaesso accreditom inscreve:_  
                     _error_accreditos.inwaledos_

  
_denovod conaori welhas?_

 _quaesso accreditom inscreve:_  
                     _error_accreditos.inwaledos_

  
_denovod conaori welhas?_

 _quaesso accreditom inscreve:_  
                     _error_accreditos.inwaledos_  
                     _error_nimissos.conagitos_  
**_ACCESSOI INTERDEDECETOR_**  
                     _ **ADVERTISSOS MEMITHETOR**_

  
_denovod conaori welhas?_

 

                                                       and he could not STAND THIS

1700Hz1700Hz 

                                                  50 Hz!

                                                                                                                   {c6/2,a5,e} {b&/4,g,c} {d6,b&5,a} {c6/2.,a5,e}

 

it was

 

 _SCIUTOS!dehabilitatos?error_superposponetor_  
_SCIUTOS!dehabilitatos?error_superposponetor_

 

 _se weros/tom…                     weros?itave_  
_se weros/tom…                     weros?itave_  
_se weros/tom…                     weros?itave_  
_se weros/tom…                     weros?neum_ ** _CAVE_SUSTEMA.DEESSET:WERIFACIE_**  
_se weros/tom…                     weros?neum_ ** _CAVE_SUSTEMA.DEESSET:WERIFACIE_**  
_se weros/tom…                     weros?itave_

 

900 Hz1700 Hz1700 Hz

                                                            50 Hz                     50 Hz?50 Hz?50 Hz?50Hz?

 

TOO MUCH he could not

900 Hz1700 Hz440 Hz

 

 

 _error_entratos.sperevandos.ne.recepiontor_  
_error_exsequi.ne.potuissetor_

 

1900 Hz!1900 Hz!2500 Hz!

{c6/2,a5,e} {b&/4,g,c} {d6,b&5,a} {c6/2.,a5,e}

 

 _interrogatio:                error_ceristor.incognoscitens_  
_nountios?error_interdedecetor.ceristri_

 

                              he was getting                                                  LOST

 

he couldn’t

 

_interrogatio:                error_ceristor.incognoscitens_

                                                                                     he was                         BREAKING

 

 _nountios?error_interdedecetor.ceristri_  
_nountios?error_interdedecetor.ceristri_

 

2500 Hz/50 Hz/2500 Hz 

{f6/4,d5,c6} {e,c#5,a} {d6,b&4,a5}

 

 _desideratos:                     envuenie_ceristor.waledos_  
_scioscents…_  
_scioscents…_  
_scioscents…_

 

                                                                                          {c6/2.,a4,e5}

 _desideratos:                     envuenie_ceristor.waledos_  
_scioscents…_

**_NECTOS ABMITHETOR_**

 

 

 

                                                                                                         he

Fuck                     someone said

 _Fuck_  
  
                                               someone was  
                                                                           broken glass bloodinmouth taste water choking

 

 

 

 

 

someone was scared

 

 

 

                         he was in his body                              but was he in his body his body was not working

                                                              was it working was he the kind of thing that normally had nerve endings

 

 

difficult

                                                            he had been thinking about—

someone?

 

Colonel Young

weather

Colonel

                                                                 sometimes in new mexico the land was so flat you saw a storm coming in from  
                                                                 miles away the clouds moving crowding over the mountains curling changing  
                                                                 their shape so fast so many different colors you wouldn’t think there’d be so many

_//Everett//_

                                                                 different shades of blue though it wasn’t blue really or what was the boundary  
                                                                 when did it stop being something other than blue like when he was twelve  
                                                                 years old a horse kicked him his flesh changed colors so people could change  
                                                                 colors and _this_ storm (but was it a storm) had a color like a bruise but

//Come on come on God _fuck//_                a bruise that hurt to look at the kind of bruise that you could

No no nono

 

                                                                 die from maybe if you were not careful you had to be careful if you were  
                                                                 that kind of thing a thing that could get hurt

 

 

// _Talk to me_ //

 

                                        He was—

 

 

 

                                                                 it had hurt and he had thought the body should get stronger you shouldn’t  
                                                                 be able to bruise twice in the same place why didn’t your body

// _Talk to me FUCK talk to me_ //              learn from all the things that had hurt it and make itself hardier  
                                                       tougher harder to hurt but it seemed to get weaker with  
                                                       everything that hurt it which was just

// _Please_ //

 

                                                            //What are you doing//                          Young said because

//I’m trying to fix things//

                                                                           He could feel—

                                                                                                              things _becoming_

 

 

                                                                                                                                       (scared and unbearably careful trying to _fix_ —)

Rush was touching his forehead and his hand was trembling just a little.

                                                            //You’re—//

//You’re not so different from Destiny, really. Voltage differentials. Neuronal impulses. It’s all the same.//

                                                            //And when did you figure out how to do this?//

//Just now.// Rush was muffling him in warmsoftsoothing reassurance, so he didn’t feel like anything was wrong.

//A circuit is a circuit after all.//

                                                            He didn’t feel like anything was wrong.

                                                            //What—//

//Shh. You’re all right.//

                                                                           His thoughts—

resumed their normal, linear, interpretable pattern.

“Can you speak?” Rush asked. He pulled his hand abruptly away from Young’s forehead and folded his arms very tightly across his chest.

Young nodded.

“Oh, very helpful. You’ve overshot stoicism and landed in the realm of— of _stupidity_.” Why was Rush so anxious?

“Are you seriously harassing him?” Eli called from across the room. “He just _fainted_ , and it was probably _your fault.”_

Had he fainted? For a moment there, he had felt like something was wrong with him. But—

“I can speak,” Young said, squinting up at Rush. “God, you’re such a jackass sometimes.”

“I’ve never claimed otherwise.” Rush’s thoughts were strangely tumultuous, absolutely throbbing with relief.

“Are you—“ Young said, trying to sit up and breaking off as he jolted his wounded arm. “Are you still blocking the signal?”

Rush looked at him blankly. “What signal?”

“The aliens are broadcasting our position. Remember?”

Rush stared at him.

“That’s what you said.”

“When?” Rush seemed confused for some reason.

“About an hour ago? You built an interface and we talked?”

Rush shook his head. “I don’t—“

He didn’t remember.

“This day just keeps getting better,” Young said. “Look, you need to try and stop Destiny from transmitting that signal.”

“I can’t,” Rush said, looking away and biting his lip. “I can’t do that.”

“What do you mean, you _can’t_?”

“We’re just going to have to hope we can kill them all before reinforcements arrive. Worst case scenario, I’ll jump us to FTL.”

Rush was hiding something, breaking his thoughts into unreadable splinters, and Young felt too vague and strange to get to the bottom of them. But— God, when _wasn’t_ Rush hiding something, he thought, resigned. It was one of those wounds, maybe minor and maybe fatal, that he was going to have to ignore for now.

“Have you two been able to modify the life signs detector yet?” he asked Chloe and Eli— who were sitting at the forward monitors, pretending to work while very obviously eavesdropping on the conversation.

“No,” Eli said defensively. “I’m not magical, okay? Chloe? Are you magical? No. You’re not. We can’t just modify sensors to detect some unknown interference pattern that is broadcasting _somewhere_ on the electromagnetic spectrum.”

“Eli,” Rush said. “Don’t panic.” There was a hint of something in his expression that was almost deadpan.

“Oh, _don’t panic._ That’s great. Coming from a guy who regularly passes out from stress, that means a lot.”

“Yes, well,” Rush said, “in order for us to retake the ship, we need to know how many of them there are, and where they are. Therefore, it follows that we’re going to have to—“ he broke off with a brief swell of distress before continuing, determined, “capture one of them and determine how they’re generating the interference pattern.”

Young, Chloe, and Eli stared at him in disbelief.

“ _Capture_ one?” Chloe asked faintly.

Rush got painfully to his feet. “That’s what I said.” He reached over to collect Young’s sidearm from the science console. He ejected the clip, checked the ammunition, and reassembled the gun with a satisfying click. He handed it to Eli, and reached over coolly to pick up Young’s assault rifle.

“Are you _crazy?_ ” Eli asked. It sounded like a serious question.

Rush handed Chloe the assault rifle and turned to face him. He was smiling faintly. “Are you taking a poll?” he said.


	18. Chapter 18

Young had often wondered in the past about what kept Rush going. He meant that in what he sometimes whimsically pictured as an Energizer or a Duracell sense— Rush was a small guy who never seemed to eat or sleep enough, but god _damn_ , the man _did not quit_. Until he did, like his metaphorical batteries had run out, and it was never in the slowly winding down kind of way. He wasn’t the Energizer Bunny beating slower and slower drumbeats; he was the Energizer Bunny keeling over mid-thump like the dead and then sleeping for something like seventeen hours. Most of the time it was funny; in battle it was enviable. Young had never had a better chance to realize that.

Because Rush was not only still on his feet, and not only keeping Young on _his_ feet, but practically vibrating with energy. Getting back on board Destiny seemed to have kicked him up a notch. He was twitchy as hell, but the furthest thing from exhausted.

Case in point: “Eli,” Rush snapped, after giving Eli about twenty seconds to fiddle with the cargo bay doors. “What in God’s name are you _doing?_ This shouldn’t be complicated!”

“There’s very limited power available here,” Eli said defensively.

“Have you—“

“Oh, my gosh,” Eli said, exasperated. “ _Yes_ , okay? Stop backseat troubleshooting! You always do this. It drives me nuts. Can I have fifteen seconds? Is that too much to ask?”

A few seconds later, the cargo bay doors slid open.

Chloe, to whom Rush had given the assault rifle— //Nothing deters panic better than an assault rifle,// Rush had opined— took point, sighting down the corridor with almost military precision. Someone had been training her, Young thought— probably Scott.

“Okay,” she said.

“The word is _clear_ ,” Eli said. “Not _okay_. Even _I_ know that.”

Chloe rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Let’s go.”

But Rush’s attention had been caught by _something_ ; his eyes were flicking back and forth between the long stretch of corridor and a space inside the cargo bay doors. The AI, maybe? Young was too tired to muscle in on his mind and find out.

“Rush,” he prompted quietly instead. “We’re moving out.” Then, to Eli: “Do you still have that life signs detector?”

Eli pulled the device from his pocket and held the display out. Young studied the distribution of glowing dots carefully. Most of the crew seemed to be in the mess. Several other groups of four were scattered around the ship— probably the teams that had made it back from the seed ship. Most importantly, the path to the nearest armory looked clear, which Young hoped meant that at least they wouldn’t be walking into the middle of a firefight.

Rush had moved out of the cargo bay into the corridor, but he hadn’t even glanced at the life signs detector. He was now staring at a point about five feet to their right. “No,” he whispered flatly, seemingly to the empty air. “That’s not an option. I need something else. Something that falls within the parameters of my _own_ —“ He paused for a moment. “Well, thanks for _nothing._ ”

Chloe and Eli stared at him.

After a few seconds, Rush noticed their attention. “What?” he hissed defensively.

“Um,” Eli said, drawing out the word. “Are you talking to invisible people now? This really hasn’t been a banner day for you.”

Rush looked abruptly away, misery spiking through him. Somehow Eli seemed to have hit a nerve.

“Give it a rest, Eli,” Young said.

“I didn’t—“ Eli shifted uncomfortably. “No. Sorry. You’re right. You just, uh, talk to invisible people all you want. Go crazy. I mean, not literally crazy. but—“ He trailed off. “I’ll stop talking,” he said.

//Are you okay?// Young projected to Rush.

//Fine,// Rush said shortly. //Armory?//

Young sent him a wave of assent, and they moved out into the corridor, Chloe taking point and Eli trailing behind, covering their six.

It didn’t Young long to notice that as they progressed through the hallways, the emergency lighting came up in a slow flare that faded as a they passed. That would have been great if they were trying to see where they were going, but it was the opposite of helpful when it came to hiding their presence on the ship.

//Are you doing that?// he asked. //Cut it out.//

//?//

Young directed his attention to the pale blue lights.

//Oh, for God’s sake.// Rush glared, irritated, in the direction of the ceiling. He pushed a hand against the corridor wall and the lights dimmed.

//So— _not_ you, then.//

//No. Destiny.//

//It— what? Missed you?// Young couldn’t help but feel slightly amused.

//Can you stay focused, please? Losing thirty percent of your blood volume is an unacceptable excuse for the level of distractibility you’re displaying. Don’t you people _train_ for this sort of thing?//

//Yeah. We train so that we notice things like whether sentient starships are accidentally giving away our location.//

Rush ignored him with a sense of aggravation.

After a few minutes, they made it to the armory. Rush pushed Young against the wall just inside the door, and tried to control his slow slide down the metal with limited success until Eli moved to lend a hand. Maybe losing thirty percent of his blood volume, Young thoughts, would be an acceptable excuse for his physical exhaustion.

He shut his eyes against a heaving visual field and relocated to Rush’s more stable head. Rush was staring at the armory’s array of weapons.

“How do we know what to pick?” Chloe asked uncertainly.

Rush had absolutely no idea, but Young steered his attention, arming each of them with an M9 handgun and an M16 rifle, a kevlar jacket, and all the extra clips that they could carry with them. He couldn’t help drifting into a kind of tactical meditation, weighing the potential usefulness of an M67 grenade, and wishing for zats, which were light and easier for amateurs to aim with. God, he wished that Icarus Base had been armed with zats.

//The inside of your head,// Rush said wearily, //is exactly what I imagined it would be like.//

//Oh, don’t even start with me.//

“So— do we actually have a plan for how we’re going to do this?” Eli asked.

“It’s not exactly conceptually _difficult_ ,” Rush said. “Chloe finds a group, we shoot most of them, we disable one, we drag it to the nearest lab, we modify our detectors appropriately, then eliminate all of them.”

They stared at him.

“Why does it have to be _alive?_ ” Chloe asked tremulously. “You _know_ what they’re like.”

Rush avoided looking at her. He was checking his sidearm. “They have the capacity for telepathic communication, so they’re capable of generating EM fields at baseline. If this is an inherently biological phenomenon, I don’t want to have to do this twice.”

Young looked at Eli, waiting for a translation.

Eli said, “They may be generating the interference patterns with their brains, and we can’t scan them if they’re dead.”

“Well, it’s not ideal,” Young said, “but if that’s what we’re dealing with—“ He motioned to Eli. “Life signs detector?”

Eli handed it over, and Young looked for one of the away teams. “Let’s head toward this group,” he said, pointing out four glowing dots. “More firepower can’t hurt— but if we meet up with anything else on the way, so be it.”

They left the armory in the same formation they’d entered, with Rush and Young protected by Chloe and Eli. Young had a moment of resenting that he was now one of the weakest members of the team. But he couldn’t deny that he was still struggling to stay upright.

After a few minutes, Chloe stopped them, holding up a hand. She looked back and made a vague significant hand gesture, pointing to the corner.

Rush nodded at her and gave Young a gentle shove, indicating that he should stick to the nearest wall. Eli took up a position defending him. Young shook his head vigorously, hating the idea of Rush and Chloe, _Rush and Chloe_ , trying to do this thing alone.

//No,// Rush said. //Not alone. Like—//

With a strange sensation of melding-meeting-alignment-unification like two sides of a mirror circuiting in an infinite touch—

—he _stepped_ into Young and they _stepped_ into him. And they were smaller now but more powerful without the weight of injury. They hefted the M16, surprised by the steadiness of their arms and wrists, but then they had been steadier the first time too though that had been their other body and this one was littler, weaker even though crisp and fast, and they would never have made it through basic training like this but their reflexes were lethal and they shouldn’t underestimate that hair-trigger twitch all it took was control and they had control sometimes, they did, didn’t they? They had control sometimes and they were going to have it now.

And they were with Chloe, and it was good to be with Chloe because Chloe was the one who understood, because she had been in the tank and she too felt the headache where something had bootprinted itself against her nervous system, and she was scared but she did not show it and that was tactically good because an emerging situation was not a useful site for emotions and to be honest they often struggled with this because sometimes an emerging situation _was_ a useful site for emotions when emotions were the only fuel you had to burn and it was an explosive fuel but it was what they had in their body. But they did not need that fuel right now so they were not being scared.

“I’m glad it’s us,” Chloe whispered, glancing at them, and they smiled at her because yes, yes, and they swept the rifle up and stepped around the corner where a group of six aliens was waiting for them and almost at once they were opening fire, the M16’s recoil friendly and steady like a hand on the shoulder steering them, and four of the enemy went down in the first sweep and that was what they had hoped for, but they slung the rifle back and pulled the M9 out for greater control and this was going to be tricky because sometimes they were a good shot and sometimes they were not a good shot and the M9 was not their favorite gun but they pulled it up as Chloe took out the fifth insectoid alien and they fired a single shot, steady and straight, right through the shoulder of the sixth alien and it went down without getting off its own shot and it was alive and that was what they had wanted, wasn’t that what they had wanted? Yes. So: good.

They moved forward and looked at it and it was lying on the deck and they did not want to look at it because it————— created distress and distress was not a tactical advantage. But goddammit they were going to do this and they reached forward to rip the metal transmitter from its head. But they touched it they touched it they _touched it_ and it was—

in them it was in them it was in their head and it could

  
Nick _she says_ not everything is a fight you have to win

see inside their head so it was time to be fast time to  
barricade the gates with whatever inconsequential  
objects happened to be

  
_The multiverse view is one of higher-order realism— Platonism about universes— and I_  
_defend it as a realist position asserting actual existence of the alternative set-theoretic_  
_universes into which our mathematical tools have allowed us to glimpse The multiverse_  
_view, therefore, does not reduce via proof to a brand of formalism In particular we may_  
_prefer some of the universes in the multiverse to others and there is no obligation to_  
_consider them all as equal_

  
close at hand let it have

  
_Cédric and his ridiculous cravat and his spider looking like a French_  
_Revolutionary portrait come to life thank God some of us aspire to be_  
_mathematicians not rock stars_ Oh hush you’re  
so unkind _she says_

  
what it could get which going to be not fucking  
much and the pain did not matter because sometimes  
pain was required and it was tactically

  
_and she gives him an exasperated look_ My family don’t hate you I think  
you know you’re projecting _And what is that supposed to mean_ I think  
you know what it means _she says_ they don’t give a damn where you’re  
from _How very bloody magnanimous of them_ You won’t even let  
me meet your family Nick where are you going this conversation isn’t  
over just because you—

  
insignificant, right? wasn’t it? wasn’t it? and anyway it couldn’t get

_/8 {a3,d4} {d,f} {a3,d4} {d,f} {a3,d4} _ {b&3,d4}  
{d,f} {b&3,d4} {d,f} {b&3,d4} _ {b&3,d4} {d,e} {b&3,d4} {d,e}  
{b&3,d4} _ {a3,c#4} {c#,e} {a3,c#4} {c#,e} {a3,c#4}

   
what it wanted oh God they couldn’t let it get what it wanted  
even if it couldn’t interpret what it could get because David—

  
_looms over them and puts his hands on their shoulders, forcing them flat_  
_againstthe floor of the pool and pulls back and pushes them under the water and_  
_his fingers dig hard into their shoulders and he presses his mouth to their mouth it’s_  
_everything they would have predicted and they cannot move_

  
but they could not get away and it was gripping their wrist its  
long fingers like cords that hurt hurt hurt and they DID NOT LIKE  
being restrained they did not like—

  
_the water because water is its own restraint the underwater_  
_smell of the kitchen and the river where they choked and David_  
_saying I’m glad I got to be here I'm glad I got to do this_

_don’t fight this Nick let go_

  
and it was a problem frankly because it wasH U R T I N GT H E M  
and they didn’t think they could stand itH U R T I N GT H E M  
and it was calling for reinforcements and reinforcements would come and it  
wouldH U R T it wouldH U R Tit would alwaysH U R T and if it  
had just been them maybe they could have stood this but it wasn’t just  
them it was them and they C O U L DN O TS T A N DI TH U R T I N GT H E M

and then abruptly—

The pain was gone.

Chloe was using a pocketknife to pull the small metal transmitter towards her.

They watched her do it. They watched the drag of the blade.

They could not seem to—

Chloe took the gun from their hand and held it to the alien’s head, her aim hard and steady, her eyes cold, hissing something at it that they could not understand. It snarled at her and they felt something inside of them _give_ —

They pitched forward onto the deck.

They were shaking. They curled their arms in tight across their chest trying to stop the shaking. It was the reaction it was the physical reaction and it was not because they wanted to curl up and die; that was insignificant it was a side effect of the interrogation and they could not allow it to influence them.

Something dark was pawing at them with animal insistence. It was whining at them in its distress. It was scared and they were scared and it needed them it needed to _be_ them; it could protect them it wanted to protect them it wanted to keep them safe. They would not have to be a mind that remembered the water they would not have to be a mind that could be hurt, they could be a thousand cool passionless circuits without nerve endings and they could be the clean orderly running of code, and that would be better yes good, God they wanted that, just let go Nick let go but no no they couldn’t do that because they were not only Nick and so they had to _hurt_ they had to make it _hurt_ they had to _be this hurting body_ but they had already let the ship have too much and now it was too late they had to fight but they had nothing to fight with—

“Nick.” That was the AI. Kneeling beside them. Looking like Daniel Jackson. Biting its lip. It was scared too but it was putting on a brave face which they had not known the AI could do. “Focus,” it said. “Focus on what you _want._ Destiny is trying to _help_ you. Tell it how to help you. Don’t fight it. Don’t fight it; you’ll lose.”

So they tried to focus tried to tell the ship how to protect them. Bulkhead doors began to slam shut around the ship, trapping intruders behind them. Force fields sprang up like sparks. Monitors in the lab that was their destination started booting up, eager to be used. The deck plating warmed under them and Destiny wanted to know if that was better if they were less scared and they were less scared and so it backed off a little still nervous but not needing so badly to be them.

“Adequate,” the AI said. Its eyes flicked to Chloe. “You’d better stop her,” it said, and for a moment the fear showed in it. “She’s in control right now, but the connection she’s making goes both ways.”

Then it was gone. And they were gone because they needed both bodies now and Young opened his eyes and had to immediately close them again. The physical sensation of being himself was intensely disorientating. He was half-seated against the wall, and his body was too large and heavy, and something about him felt— slow.

“Are you all right?” Eli whispered to him. “You passed out.”

“I’m fine,” Young said, heaving himself to his feet. “Help me up.”

Leaning heavily on Eli’s shoulder, he rounded the corner to see Rush standing next to Chloe. Chloe was still speaking to the alien in its own threatening inhuman tongue.

“Chloe,” Rush whispered fiercely to her. “Stop.”

When she failed to respond, he laid a hand on her shoulder. “ _Stop_. We’re meant to be scanning it, not engaging it in conversation.”

She tilted her head, her eyes slowly refocusing on Rush. After a moment she nodded, her lip trembling just a little, gun wavering for an instant before snapping back into place.

Eli hissed, “I just want you guys to know that this is making my top ten list of worst days ever. How the _hell_ are we supposed to get this thing to the lab?” He turned to Rush. “You practically passed out when it touched you! And it’s still _conscious!”_

Rush considered for a moment. He reached for his sidearm. There was something very, very cold in his expression. He brought the gun so it was level with the point right between the alien’s black eyes.

“ _Cubi impero, ito_ ,” he said. His voice was very flat. “ _Me tenes?”_

The alien snarled at him.

“Did it understand that?” Rush asked Chloe.

“Yes,” she whispered. “It did.”

“ _Surrege_ ,” Rush ordered, gesturing with the handgun.

The alien got slowly to its feet.

“Chloe,” Rush said, jerking his head towards Young.

Chloe moved to Young’s side and let him drape an arm over her shoulder so she could support him as he walked.

Rush was still staring at the alien. “ _Eod scibo,_ ” he said in that same flat tone. “ _Tegei sene pausad interfaciam._ ”

“What the hell are you telling it?” Young asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” Rush said tightly. His expression didn’t alter.

Eli whispered, “ _Know this: I will kill you without hesitation.”_

Young looked at him.

Eli’s face was pale. “That’s— what he said to it.”

Their progress towards the lab was slow and awful, punctuated by the sound of distant gunfire and Rush’s quiet, unintelligible commands. When they reached the lab, Rush gestured for the alien to back up against the wall, where Chloe could continue to hold her gun on it. It seemed to be fixated on Rush with a contemptuous sort of interest, though given its strange and insectoid eyes, its exact emotions were difficult to read.

“Eli,” Rush said. “Start looking for that signal.”

“Already on it,” Eli said. He had moved to one of the monitors and was squinted at it tensely, his fingers flying over the touchscreen.

//Can we question it while we have it here?// Young asked Rush.

//The only way we can understand its answers is by using Chloe or the interface device. I’m not sure that either is a good idea. We have the upper hand at the moment, but— just barely.//

The conversation made Young aware of how much stress Rush was suppressing. He was having to mercilessly clamp down on every single nerve in order to function in the same room as the alien. He wasn’t allowing himself to think, to feel, to want. This was helpful because it reassured the ship, but all the same, it made Young anxious.

For a few moments, they stood in silence, listening to the tapping of the touchscreen as Eli worked. The alien seemed to retreat into itself. It ceased its constant hissing. Its odd, restless movements stilled. It was even more unnerving like that, seemingly devoid of life.

Five minutes passed.

Ten.

Chloe’s breathing altered. It stopped, then staggered. It grew increasingly uneven.

Young glanced over at her. Her face was empty. Tear tracks shone on her cheeks in the dim light. Her knuckles were white around the grip of her handgun.

The alien was staring fixedly at her.

Young, alarmed, started to say something, but it was too late. Her voice broke the silence.

“Release me.” The words were wholly expressionless, and spoken in a tone so unlike Chloe’s that it raised the hair on the back of Young’s neck.

He tightened his grip on his pistol and glanced at Rush.

Rush closed his eyes briefly, but otherwise didn’t react.

“Release me,” Chloe said again, tilting her head in a oddly inhuman fashion.

“Who are you?” Young snapped at the alien. “What do you want with us?”

“We are Nakai,” Chloe said in the same flat voice. “We want what we have always wanted. To discover all that is. To continue without end. To read the pattern beneath existence. You will release me.”

“You release Chloe first, and then we’ll talk about it.”

“This one means nothing. She is weak. She cannot fight even one mind.”

Young… really wished that Chloe wasn’t holding a pistol right now.

“You are all weak,” Chloe continued, her gaze unblinking. “You are unworthy of this vessel. It will be liberated from you. You will be torn from this plane of existence and cast into the void.”

“I’m not interested in your opinions,” Young said harshly. “You want to be released? Then you leave her alone.”

“You will freeze in the vacuum of space,” Chloe said, her voice rising. “You will cease to exist.”

“I’ve almost got it!” Eli called. He was working at an almost inhuman rate, his eyes flicking rapidly across the computer.

“You will _never_ return to your people,” Rush said to their prisoner, in the same deadened tone with which he’d given commands. “I will see to that. At the moment of your death, you will fail to find your way back to them. Your knowledge will be lost. Your consciousness will be unmoored. Unless—“ He shifted his grip on his gun and pulled the alien’s silver transmitter out of his pocket. He laid it on the floor and poised the heel of his boot over it. “Unless you let her go. Immediately.”

“We remember you,” Chloe said slowly, gazing at him.

“Yes. I’ll bet you do.”

“You are not like the others. ” Chloe’s gun was still fixed on the alien prisoner, but her gaze and the gaze of the alien had both shifted to Rush. “You will unlock this ship for us. You will serve our will.”

“Unlikely,” Rush said contemptuously.

The alien spit something in its own language and hissed at him.

At Young’s side, a familiar figure appeared.

“Kill it,” Sheppard said tightly. “Kill it now.”

Several things happened at once.

Young’s finger started to depress the trigger.

Chloe swung her gun to the left.

Young fired, putting a bullet straight through the prisoner’s head.

Eli tackled Chloe to the deck, but not in time to keep her from getting off a shot.

Rush jerked back into Young in a familiar arc of impact, overbalancing them both. Together they crashed to the floor. Young forced himself up, adrenaline spiking, ignoring the rush of pain in his arm, and tore at Rush’s jacket,because he knew, he _knew—_

“I’m fine,” Rush said, pushing Young’s hands away.

“Shut up, you _idiot._ She hit you. I know she hit you.”

“I’m wearing a _vest_ ,” Rush said impatiently. “You’re bleeding more than I am at the moment. Get _off_ me, for God’s sake.”

Young backed up a little, still shaky with fear. He’s been so scared, so _sure_ — he hadn’t even noticed that his own arm had resumed bleeding. He looked down at the warm, damp bandage and decided that he couldn’t deal with it right now.

Chloe had her arms locked around Eli’s neck, her head buried in his shoulder.

“You’re okay,” Eli said. He was looking away from Rush and Young, away from the dead alien, up towards the ceiling. “You’re okay,” he repeated softly. “Rush is okay. Everyone’s okay.”

Young wasn’t sure how convincing that assessment was, considering that he was bleeding copiously and could barely stay on his feet, the ship was overrun with aliens, and Chloe had just tried to shoot Rush. Chloe wasn’t going to buy it. But it was probably the right thing to say.

Rush forced himself into a standing position, wincing and laying a hand against his ribcage where, presumably, the bullet had struck his vest. He crossed the room to where Chloe and Eli were huddled on the deck. “Eli,” he said tersely. “Did you manage to map out the interference pattern?”

“Yeah,” Eli said, not paying him much attention.

“Then start modifying the sensors. We haven’t got all day.”

“I’m kind of—“ Eli said, and glanced down meaningfully at Chloe.

“Go,” Rush said. He knelt down beside Chloe as Eli moved away. “And you,” he said to her. “Stop crying. That’s an order.”

Chloe couldn’t look at him. She had folded into herself, a crumpled figure with her face buried in her hands. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

“And what are you sorry for, then?” Rush’s voice had gentled. “You’re by far the nicest person who’s ever attempted to kill me. Some of them— pssh. I mean, look at that one.” He jerked his head in Young’s direction. “What a bloody mess.”

“Hey,” Young said, deciding to play along. “I think I’m offended.”

“ _And_ it wasn’t your fault,” Rush continued, gazing at Chloe steadily. He shook his head mock-sadly. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to try much harder if you want me to hate you. Bottom marks. A frankly pathetic attempt.”

She still wouldn’t look at him.

He leaned in, a little uncertainly, and laid a hand on her shoulder.

That seemed to have been what she needed. Abruptly she threw her arms around him, clinging to him tightly and letting out a sob.

“There, there,” Rush said, patting her awkwardly on the back. “See? It’s all right.”

“You’re hating this,” Chloe said, her voice choked a mix of tears and laughter. “You hate it when people touch you.”

“Well,” Rush said— but floundered in the face of trying to deny it.

“See, you can’t even lie about it.” She buried her face in his shoulder briefly, then released him. “I’d better go help Eli,” she said, sniffing and wiping her face. "I'll have my big breakdown later, when there's time. You'll have to make me ice cream. Or at least put some protein paste in a paper cone."

Rush gave her a crooked almost-smile. "I'll do what I can."

//Careful,// Young said. //You’re going to damage your reputation.//

Rush shot him an unamused look, and returned to Young’s side to adjust the bandage on his arm, which was not so much a bandage as a belt tied around a scrap of shirt.

//You were supposed to say, What reputation. And then I would say, Your reputation as a sullen misanthrope.//

//Yes,// Rush said. //I understood the drift. I opted not to indulge your so-called sense of humor.” He tightened the belt, and Young winced. //This is bleeding again, by the way.//

//It never really stopped. Shouldn’t _you_ be the one modifying the sensors?//

//In combination, they’re faster than I would be. At least when operating conventional equipment. Interfaces are beginning to feel somewhat— foreign to me.//

//Maybe I should replace you with Eli,// Young said dryly.

//Maybe you should,// Rush said. His weather was complicated— cloudy and wistful.

//Rush— I wasn’t serious.//

//I was. Eli’s more reliable in every sphere you might consider.//

//Why are we even talking about this right now? Jesus Christ. You’re it, okay? You’re my choice. For a lot of different reasons.//

Rush shrugged, looking down. One of his hands was resting at Young’s wrist— a light touch that didn’t presume to take more than it was offered. He was suppressing a number of hard-to-read emotions: relief clearest among them, but also something else, something fragile and apprehensive.

// You are,// Young said intensely. //You always will be.//

Their eyes met in what should have been a fleeting moment but turned out inexplicably not to be.

“Hey, guys!” Eli called to them, and they both flinched, gazes flying apart. Rush quickly removed his hand from Young’s wrist. “So the modifications are done, and they should be syncing up to the life signs monitor now.”

Rush reached over to grab the detector. He and Young had only been studying it for a few seconds when an array of red dots appeared. Young did a quick count and came up with eighteen.

“Not as many as I would have thought,” he commented to Rush.

“Yes, well; it’s enough. We have to retake the bridge so we can undock and get the hell out of here before any of their friends show up.”

“We’re going to need more bodies,” Young said, frowning. “I think it’s time to find Greer and Scott.”

They moved out of the lab— or started to. Young had managed to make it upright and had just about steadied himself on his feet when he saw Chloe checking the clip in her pistol.

“Chloe,” he said. “I think you should leave your weapons here.”

She dropped her eyes, lowering the gun.

//Don’t,// Rush said fiercely. //Don’t do that to her. We need her.//

//We need _you_ more. She could have killed you.//

//That was an unusual circumstance. It’s not likely to be replicated.//

Young fixed him with a steady look. //Can you really assure me of that?//

Rush pressed his lips into a thin line, turning away angrily.

“Chloe,” Young said.

She looked at him, her expression resigned.

“This isn’t a punishment. I’ve got trained military personnel on this ship who wouldn’t be able to do what you’ve done today. So I don’t want you to think—“

“It’s all right,” she said quietly. “I understand. Maybe— maybe you should lock me up somewhere until this is over. Just to be safe.”

“Don’t be _stupid_ ,” Rush snapped.

Young wasn’t sure who the comment was aimed at. He couldn’t dismiss Chloe’s idea out of hand. “Rush—“ he began.

Rush pushed past him. “Help the colonel,” he ordered Chloe sharply.

Young sighed. He didn’t protest when Chloe silently moved to shift his arm onto her shoulders. He supposed that at least she was unlikely to succeed in killing Rush this way.

They finally managed to move out, with Rush taking point. Almost immediately, Young found himself glad that he _hadn’t_ ordered Chloe locked up. She was the only thing keeping him standing, and he needed to lean on her more and more as they progressed. He was losing energy. Or, he thought, _Rush_ was losing energy, and Young had been using Rush’s energy for quite a while. He hadn’t really been aware of it; he was tired, and their edges tended to be pretty blurry, which sometimes made it hard to tell where exactly one of them stopped and the other began. Rush had been feeding him strengthwarmthpower through those not-really-barriers, only it was more like Rush had been _bleeding_ strengthwarmthpower, and now he was finally running out. His feet were killing him, and he was shaky, and feeling the effects of Young’s exhaustion. God, Young thought, what a pair they made.

He was distracted by the sound of gunfire not far from their position. He motioned for the life signs detector, and Chloe held it out. There were four Destiny-crew dots flanked on both sides by aliens.

Young motioned Eli to take point with Rush.

//Don’t fire until you’ve got a clear line,// he told Rush. //You don’t want to give away our position. And don’t shoot any of _our_ people.//

//I’m not an idiot,// Rush snapped.

Young rolled his eyes and drew his own sidearm. He was balanced, not without a certain trepidation, on his own two feet, and in the back of his mind he was conscious of energy as a limited resource, one that he was almost certainly splitting with Rush. He wondered who needed it more; who was weaker; who would do the most damage. It seemed like a complicated question.

And then he didn’t have time to wonder about it, because they could see five of the Nakai arrayed across the corridor.

// _Now,_ // Young said, and Rush opened fire, and Eli followed.

Young was having to shoot left-handed. He couldn’t even lift his right arm enough to brace his shooting hand. He felt almost out of his body with the effort it took to aim and keep the gun steady. But he got off a couple of careful shots. He saw three of the aliens drop before the final two turned, raising their plasma weapons. Young tackled Chloe to the deck, knocking her out of the way of one of the blasts. When he raised his head, Eli and Rush were still firing, and they kept firing until the last two aliens were dead.

As the last of the Nakai fell, Rush staggered sideways. He barely caught himself against the corridor wall. For one agonizing second Young could feel how tired he was, before Rush brutally suppressed the feeling.

Greer, James, Barnes, and Thomas picked their way around the corner, stepping gingerly over the bodies of the dead Nakai.

“Sweet Jesus, it’s good to see you people,” Greer said feelingly. With his unerring instinct, he knelt down immediately next to Chloe and Young. “What the hell is this?” he asked, gesturing to Young’s blood-soaked uniform. “Sir.”

Young said, “It looks worse then it is.”

Greer eyed him skeptically.

Young pushed himself upright, leaning heavily on Chloe. He repeated emphatically, “It looks worse than it is. Report, Sergeant.”

Greer shook his head, but said, “The civilians are secure in the mess. We’ve been taking back strategic locations. The bridge is already ours; there’s a three-man detail there. We weren’t sure where to head next when suddenly these guys started showing up on our detectors.”

“Yeah,” Young said. “That was us.”

“I figured,” Greer said. “A sudden, unexplained tactical advantage? That’s classic Rush.”

Young raised his eyebrows and shrugged slightly, wincing. He couldn’t deny it.

Greer said, “If you four want to head to the bridge, Scott and I can mop up the rest of these things. We can even lend you Barnes or Thomas, seeing as how you’re, uh—“ he glanced at Rush, leaning against the wall with his eyes closed— “the walking wounded.”

//Can you walk?// Young asked Rush.

//What kind of fucking question is that, can I _walk._ Can _you_ fucking walk? Of course I can _walk_ ; I’ve been doing it for the past few fucking hours.//

This response suggested to Young that Rush was not entirely sure he could walk, and also that he was likely to crash pretty soon. Still, though— Greer needed the firepower.

“The bridge isn’t far,” he said. “I think we’ll be fine.”

It took Rush a long time after they saw Greer’s team off to make it upright, but once he was standing, he seemed to tap into some kind of thin, brittle, manic power. He took point on their way to the bridge, and when they’d reached it, he paced back and forth in front of the viewscreen, clenching and unclenching his fists.

Young, for his part, collapsed into the central chair. “Is everyone off the seed ship?” he asked.

Rush titled his head, fixing his eyes on a point in empty space. “Yes,” he said.

“Okay. Let’s—“ Young was hit by a nauseating rush of vertigo. His vision grayed out for a second. Across the room, Rush was gripping a console, looking white-faced. “Let’s undock,” Young managed.

“Initiating the docking protocol,” Chloe said.

Destiny lurched free of the other ship, drifting ponderously away on the back of its sublight engines.

“Eli,” Young said. “What’s the status of the FTL drive?”

“We’re good to go as soon as—“

An alarm shrieked as the sensors picked up four ships dropping into normal space. Almost immediately, the new ships opened fire.

“Shield status,” Young demanded, clutching the arms of the chair as the ship rocked.

Rush was covering his ears with his hands and staring at nothing, his expression vague and very distressed.

“Rush, _shield status._ ”

Rush flinched. “Forty percent,” he said. “Our shields are still merged with the seed ship. The greater area is weakening their intensity.”

“We have to undock _faster_ ,” Young snapped.

//You’re not helping,// Rush shot at him.

“Firing maneuvering thrusters!” Eli yelled over the alarms.

//Maybe now would be a good time for you to merge with Destiny,// Young suggested.

//That’s not going to end well.//

//Neither is _this._ // Another wave of spins hit, and Young dropped his forehead into his hand, trying to stop himself from actually throwing up. When he looked back up, Sheppard was standing to his left, looking unbearably anxious.

“Don’t push him,” Sheppard said. “He’s—“

“Shields are at twenty-four percent,” Eli called. “Four minutes to undocking.”

“Are we going to make it or not?” Young asked.

“Maybe we can power the shields with your pointless questions,” Rush said viciously.

“Shields at fifteen percent,” Eli said. “We’re definitely _not_ going to make it.”

Rush was bent over a console, fingers flying. //I’m going to try something,// he said tersely. //Don’t talk to me.//

The flow of energy between them had reversed. Now Rush was borrowing Young’s focus, his strength, draining the thin shared well between them faster than it could possibly be refilled. He was writing the skeleton of a short program, the primary purpose of which seemed to be to speed up the undocking protocol. But—

“He’s not going to finish in time,” Young said to Sheppard under his breath.

Sheppard flickered nervously.

Rush had typed fewer than fifteen lines of code when he initiated the program. But finishing the program, Young realized, had never been his intention. Instead, he projected his intent at the ship, _wanting_ at it, _needing_ to speed the undocking.

“How the hell do you _do_ this stuff?” Eli yelled at Rush as their speed increased. “Shields to _eight percent!”_

Young felt Rush latch onto his mind in some manner that was faintly painful, as though his fingertips were digging in. He was trying not to get lost in the cavern of his own consciousness, which was filling with the amorphous mass of the ship; he was clinging to the very edge of Young’s solid and orderly mind, desperately trying not to lose his hold on it. But the ship was eating at him, unraveling him on instinct, pulling him apart thread by thread. Young tried to haul him up, and couldn’t do it; he was too exhausted, and the ship had too tight a grip.

“We’re out!” Chloe called. “The drive is spinning up.”

Frantically, Rush _wanted_ the ship to focus on the FTL drive, and it turned its attention away from him— enough that Young could stretch out into the dark and beg and tug and force and coax and tear the scattered threads of him back. He felt spread so thinly, devoid of substance, and he wondered if this was how Rush felt when he was with the ship. Like there was no connective tissue left in his body, just unfocused goals and distant pain.

He could feel when Rush finally _cohered_ enough to get free of the ship’s grasp. So that was done, he thought stupidly. That was done; that was good; that was what he had wanted and now nothing was holding him together because there was nothing he had to do. He opened his eyes and saw the blurring of stars as they entered FTL. It was really beautiful; it reminded him of Rush’s mind when Rush was thinking, because Rush thought too fast to follow; you couldn’t see the separate stars, but you knew they were there, burning fiercely in their own impossible cosmos; and then it occurred to him that he should look for Rush; was Rush okay? Was Rush still standing? And Rush was leaning against one of the consoles, breathing hard, but he was okay, and he turned to look at Young, his face strangely naked with worry, like something had been stripped away, and Young wondered why he was worried, and then it occurred to him that he was about to pass out, and that he was in fact passing out, and there was nothing that he could—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “The multiverse view…” is a quote from Joel David Hamkins’s “The Set-Theoretic Multiverse.”
> 
> Cédric with the cravat and the spider is Cédric Villani.
> 
> The chunk of music is the opening piano line of Schubert’s “Ständchen.”


	19. Chapter 19

Young regained consciousness with a sense that he would really rather not regain consciousness. Regaining consciousness seemed like an all-around terrible idea. His head was killing him. His right arm was aching, and when he tried to move it, he realized he couldn’t, which made him panic until the thought occurred to him that it was in a sling. He couldn’t remember why it was in a sling, or why it hurt so much, or why he felt as though he’d been turned inside out and put back the wrong way.

He could hear the faint clicking of fingers on a keyboard. It reassured him, for some reason he couldn’t assess. Someone in the back of his mind was thinking in Ancient: a very faint, unsteady, and distracted stream.

He remembered Rush, and the aliens, and the seed ship.

He opened his eyes and, squinting, tilted his head to the right. Rush was sitting cross-legged on the adjacent gurney, frowning at his computer and stabbing ferociously at the keys. He hadn’t noticed Young was awake, or was pretending he hadn’t. Young let his gaze rest on him for a minute, not thinking about anything in particular, just feeling weirdly peaceful and— looking at Rush.

Eventually he pushed himself up on his good elbow, trying to get into a seated position.

“Stop that,” Rush said, not looking up from his computer. “You’re not supposed to be sitting.”

“Nice to see you too,” Young said. He lay back.

He thought Rush would say something more, but Rush didn’t. His weather was weirdly unhappy: a green-gray flux of storm clouds that moved fast and angrily, spitting uneasy rain. Something felt _scared_ about it, but Young couldn’t pin down a cause.

“Rush,” he said cautiously, wondering if something had happened while he was out.

“What?” Rush snapped. “What do you want from me? Fucking breakfast in bed?”

“I’ll take it if you’re offering,” Young said, “but I was thinking more along the lines of an update?”

“We’re still at FTL,” Rush said. “All of the Nakai have been eliminated. We suffered no loss of personnel. In fact, the only significant injury was Greer, who, in typical fashion, offered to donate blood to you and didn’t know when to stop.”

Young glanced over and saw Greer stretched out on a gurney across the room.

“Hey, sir,” Greer said, giving a half-hearted wave. “Don’t pay attention to Rush. He’s just pissed off because he was worried.”

“I was not _worried,_ ” Rush said defensively.

“He totally was,” Greer said.

Rush looked up at the ceiling, as if praying for patience. He turned back to his laptop.

“And you’re doing what, now?” Young asked him.

“Trying to determined whether the Nakai were able to modify any systems while they were on board.”

“Okay,” Young said. He didn’t understand why that would upset Rush so much. “That seems pretty reasonable.”

“I’m infinitely relieved to know I have your approval.”

//What the hell is wrong with you?// Young asked. //Did something happen? Why are you being so— extra- _you?_ //

Rush glared at him. //Nothing happened,// he said tightly. //Nothing that makes a difference. Nothing that changes _anything_.// He was hammering his thoughts into unreadable splinters.

Young winced. //Could you stop— doing that? I already have kind of a headache.//

//You should. You nearly died of blood loss.//

//Why are you making it sound like _my fault_?//

//I don’t know; why are you poking around in my _head?_ //

//I’m not _poking around in your head_ ; it’s just—“ Young sighed, and redirected the conversation. //Did you get pulled into the ship while I was out?//

//No. The ship has enough to deal with. I’ve been redirecting its attention.//

//And you’re— you know— okay? You were in rough shape last— whenever.// He waved a hand vaguely.

//I’m _fine_ ,// Rush said savagely. //Why, were you _worried_ about me?//

It stung. Young, trying to sound like he was joking instead of hurt, said, //Oh, what, is that against some piece of legislation I don’t know about? Let me guess: Chapter Four, Article Thirteen, Subheading Seven: no human emotion is to be permitted within fifteen feet of Nicholas Rush.//

//Meters,// Rush snapped.

//What?//

//It’s going to be in the fucking metric system if I have anything to do with it.//

There was a pause. Young looked very closely at Rush and saw that Rush was deliberately not looking at him because he was afraid that if he did he wouldn’t be able to stay angry. He really wanted to stay angry, and Young was making it hard for him.

//Okay,// Young said at last, crossing his arms— or at least trying to. //Give me my punishment. I’m ready.//

// _What?_ //

//For violating— whatever it was. Chapter Thirteen, Article Four. Am I not allowed to laugh for the next twenty-four hours? Do I have to listen to you give a lecture on how scientific progress is being strangled by the chain of command? You pretty much give that lecture every two weeks anyway; I think I’ve got it memorized. Wait, I know; I have to watch and take notes while you yell at Volker, so I can improve my heartless-bastard style.//

Rush was fighting a smile. He looked down, tucking his hair behind one ear.

There was a pause.

//I wasn’t worried about you,// Rush said. //Just to be clear.//

//I wasn’t worried about you, either,// Young said. //So we’re good, then. No violations of the code.//

Their gazes met, just for an instant, before Rush cleared his throat and glanced away.

In the silence that followed, Young could hear TJ’s pealing laughter ring out from her office. It caught his attention. He felt like it had been a long time since he’d heard her really laugh. She’d had— probably the hardest time of any of them, on Destiny.

Then Varro said something in a low voice, and the sound of that laughter came again. Young couldn’t help the flinch of betrayal. It wasn’t that he’d ever thought TJ was _his_ , but he’d been the one to make her laugh, not so long ago.

He thought about calling her to come out here. He could still make her laugh. He could; he could prove it; he could prove something larger and more important; he could prove that he was still—

//Don’t,// Rush said. He was staring at his laptop. His projection had gone very subdued.

//It’s got nothing to do with you,// Young said sharply, hurt flowering into anger. //I wasn’t actually going to— Do I have to be responsible for every goddamn thought I have?//

Without really meaning to, he pulled back from Rush’s mind slightly, trying to shield and protect his thoughts. Rush shut his eyes and clutched at the edge of the gurney tightly. His mental landscape turned briefly seasick. When he opened his eyes again, his gaze was furious. //So now you’re punishing me for telling you what you already know, which is that you’d only complicate things for her? You’ve got no business forcing your way into her life—//

//Why, because I’m tied up with _you?_ // Young flung at him. //I mean, I don’t want to discount your advice; I know you’re such an _expert_ on interpersonal relationships; they all seem to work out so well for you. I’m an especially big fan of your work with David Telford; A+, just a really bang-up job.//

//Fuck you,// Rush said levelly. His mind had gone tense and mercilessly tamped-down. //You know I’m right; you just can’t stand to admit that you can’t order people to be what you want; that they get to make their own choices, and you don’t get to tell them how to be happy, which drives you _mad—_ //

Young laughed out loud, incredulously. // _You’re_ lecturing me about choices? All you do is manipulate the people on this ship! You lie and scheme to get what you want, and you don’t give a _damn_ about people’s happiness. All you care about is the goddamn ship and its mission. You’d do anything to get your precious mysteries-of-the-universe crap, including killing me _and_ the entire crew. Don’t think for a _second_ I’m not aware of that.//

“That’s not true,” Rush said, his voice loud and agitated in the angry silence. “Like you’ve the first _idea_ what you’re talking about. You can’t understand simple logic, much less the kind of calculation that I deal with on a daily basis, that I _have_ to deal with if I’m ever going to—“

//Right, I get it,// Young said with heavy sarcasm. //I’m an idiot. You’ve made that incredibly clear. But at least I’m not so far removed from being human that I can’t imagine what it means to care about another human being. At least that’s even a _possibility_ for me, because I haven’t forgotten how to interact with someone without constantly playing them, without lying to them and bullshitting them at every turn—//

Rush abruptly reached for his boots and started putting them on. His thoughts had switched into Ancient, either because he’d lost control over English or because he didn’t want Young to understand them. With the change in languages had come a change in volume: unleashed, his mind was shrieking at an intolerable pitch, its harmonic overtones communicating claustrophobia. He wanted _out_ ; he was thinking about boxes filled with water; he had to get _out,_ he had to get _out, out, out._

//Where are you going to _go?_ // Young shot at him.

// _AWAY_.// Rush slid off the gurney. //Only block me if you enjoy going into cardiac arrest trying to pull me out of the ship.//

//You can’t leave,// Young pointed out.

//Watch me.// Rush scooped up his laptop and his battered crutch, heading for the door.

Greer looked at Young, perplexed. “Do I even want to know… ?”

TJ appeared in the doorway of her office. “Rush,” she called after him. “Where are you going? I didn’t clear you for—“

“There’s nothing to clear,” Rush snapped.

The infirmary doors slammed closed behind him.

Young’s attention went with Rush, waiting with a cringing anticipation for the inevitable nausea and headache. He didn’t know exactly what their radius was at this point, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t as far as Rush would want it to be.

Rush passed the fifty-yard mark and the one-hundred-and-fifty-yard mark with no perceptible problems. He continued on, past the mess, past the control interface room, into the dark parts of the ship.

//What happened to our radius?// Young asked.

//Don’t talk to me.//

//Can you stop being such a prima donna for two minutes and answer my goddamn question?//

Rush paused in the middle of the corridor. He wasn’t— really thinking anymore. Things were happening in his head, but he had no control over them. Someone was rolling the white cuff of a sleeve back. Someone was throwing himself against the inside of a door. Someone was sitting at a hospital bed and someone was ducking under a broken window and someone was choking on a mouthful of water or not water and someone had to learn how to get _out_ but someone never learned and someone crouched against a bulkhead pressing his shaking hands against his head and would it really be so bad would it? would it? to not be a person and just be threads and he would not _be_ the subject of the sentence any longer, did he or would he or could he or could he ever, _potissessed, possibilitas essed_ ,and he would not be a thing that could hurt, and it loved him, and that was why it ate away at him, that was what you did to the things you loved, and when it had eaten him up then nothing would ever eat away at him again, and that was what he wanted, that was the way out—

— meanwhile, Young tried to make himself as invisible as possible. He was afraid that even the faintest reminder of his presence might push Rush into joining with the ship.

“Nick.”

Rush looked up, clenching his hands into fists.

“Nick.” The AI was crouching next to him, looking like Daniel Jackson, holding its hands up, palm-out. “Come on. We talked about this. Not a good idea.”

Rush took a deep breath and made an effort to calm himself down.

“Come on,” the AI said gently, watching Rush’s face closely. “Let’s get out of here. We’ve got a lot of things to do.”

Rush pushed himself to his feet and took off unsteadily down the corridor. “Leave me alone.”

The AI fell into step beside him. “Sure,” it said mildly. “In a minute.”

Rush didn’t protest its company after that. In fact, he seemed to be soothed by having it there.

Young, reassured that Rush wasn’t at risk of integrating himself with Destiny, let the infirmary fade back up around him. He didn’t really want to leave Rush, but he was pretty sure Rush needed as much space as Young could give him.

“Colonel,” TJ said, seeing that his eyes were open. “How are you feeling?”

“Terrible,” Young said shortly. He couldn’t pretend to be anything other than emotionally and physically exhausted.

“Yeah, there was a pretty nasty anti-coagulant in those darts, plus a local neurotoxin. It took you about ten hours to metabolize it.” She was pouring him a cup of her terrible budget Gatorade, which he resigned himself to having to drink. “You were in pretty bad shape.

Young accepted the cup and downed half of it with a grimace. The salt didn’t particularly improve his mood. “How’s Rush? Other than—“ he looked away— “the obvious.”

TJ compressed her lips. “He’s… okay. He had a tough time the first few hours you were out. He wasn’t talking very much, I think because he was having trouble with English.”

Young nodded. “Linguistically speaking, the ship is pretty much set in its ways.”

“I guess your… connection, or whatever it is, is repaired now?”

Young sighed. “Well, unsurprisingly, I managed to piss him off within ten minutes of being awake, so he’s not telling me anything at the moment, and I have no idea. He seemed to know he’d be able to leave. Which is pretty typical.”

TJ gave him a brief, weary smile.

Young pushed himself to a seated position, wincing slightly. “Do we need to talk about the virus in our ventilation system? I was just in the middle of reading your report when— you know. Seed ship, ambush, aliens, disaster.”

TJ hesitated and looked uncomfortable. “It’s not urgent.”

“How is a virus not _urgent?_ ”

Her eyes flickered to the door. “I don’t think it poses a threat to anyone,” she said. “At the moment.”

Young frowned at her. “At the moment,” he said slowly. “You’re being really fucking cryptic, which worries me a little.”

She stared down at her hands. “The virus isn’t capable of infecting human cells,” she said. “And I have a hunch where it came from.”

“Which is?” Young prompted, when she didn’t continue.

“I think it came from the neural interface chair. I’m fairly sure that the virus was the vector used to modify Rush’s genetics, and that it’s still in his system, continuing to change him.”

Young shut his eyes and took a deep breath. “I thought you _cleared_ him,” he said very levelly.

“Is that what he told you?”

“Yes, that’s what he told me!” Young snapped. Then he closed his mouth, clenching his jaw tight. “God, no, I’m such a fucking idiot. That’s what he _implied_ , and I let him get away with it, just like always. Goddammit. So you never cleared him.”

“I let him go because I couldn’t detect the virus in his blood or saliva, and because it’s incapable of infecting human cells. I never said that he was entirely clear.”

“Jesus Christ.” He wished he had something to throw at the wall. “And you just stuck this in a fucking report?”

“The safety of the crew,” TJ said, her voice rising, “was never in danger. No one is affected by this except for him, and he specifically asked me _not_ to tell you.”

“Well, that’s just goddamn _classic_ , isn’t it?”

“He was within his rights to do so.”

“Fuck. _Fuck._ ” Young covered his face with his hands. “What were you _thinking?_ You—“

“I _what?_ ” Her eyes were flashing. “I protected the privacy of a man who has none left to speak of? It was my decision to make. And I made the right call.”

He made a resigned gesture. “So why are you telling me now?”

“I— wasn’t sure before,” she said, “but—“ The anger had gone out of her. “As the virus continues to change him, it’s going to have noticeable effects. I don’t know exactly what those will be. Typically you’d expect fever, nausea, headaches. But with something like this— it’s hard to tell.”

Young let his head drop back against the pillow. He felt just— really tired. “Does he know?” he asked.

“Yes. I told him last night.”

“How did he take it?”

“He— didn’t seem surprised.”

“Of course he didn’t,” Young said softly.

There was a long silence.

TJ touched his shoulder. “Drink your electrolytes,” she said.

* * *

Young slept for most of that day and woke at some point after twenty-two hundred hours to find himself alone in the infirmary. A pale yellow light was spilling out of TJ’s office, but she was absent. The main lights in the room had automatically dimmed.

There was something curiously lonely about the room like this. Maybe he just wasn’t used to being apart from Rush. He felt weirdly— imbalanced, like someone had taken off half of his body, and he kept turning his head to look for it. He could still feel Rush in his mind, but he was trying not to pay attention, both for Rush’s sake and for his own. He couldn’t think about Rush right now. He didn’t know what to feel; everything was upsetting. But it was almost impossible _not_ to think of Rush. Somehow not-thinking-of-Rush had become not his normal way of existence. It was an outlying act that took a lot of work.

He sighed and rubbed at the side of his face.

Someone cleared their throat.

Young looked up to see that Chloe was haunting the doorway. “Sorry,” she said uncertainly. “I hope I didn’t wake you up.”

“Hey, no. You’re good. Come on in.”

She crossed the room rather hesitantly to perch on a nearby gurney. _Perch_ was the right word; there was something skittish about her, like a bird about to take flight. “I’m in hiding,” she confided. “Dr. Rush is— kind of terrorizing the science team downstairs. It’s a lot like old times. I think everyone is a little bit nostalgic, but maybe also wishing that the two of you still came as a pair.” She glanced at him briefly, incisively. It was a delicate way of asking.

“Yeah,” Young said, his throat tight. “We, uh. Had a bit of a disagreement.”

Chloe nodded as though she’d been expecting this. She looked down at her hands, touching each of her nails softly, as though double-checking that they were all still there, which Young supposed wasn’t an unreasonable habit when you’d come so close to inhabiting an alien body. “You know,” she said quietly, “it’s not easy being— the way we are, sometimes. I mean— he’s not exactly the same as me? But enough that we can sort of talk about it. Being— _different._ ”

She was holding herself very still. “I don’t talk to anyone else about it, you know? Just him. Not even Matt, because he might not understand, and I don’t want him to get hurt.”

“I don’t think _he_ talks to anyone else, either,” Young said. “For the most part.”

He felt unsure where the conversation was going. There was a fragility to the air in the room, an underwater, after-midnight quality that made what was happening feel half like a dream.

“No,” Chloe said, glancing at him. “The thing is… it’s easy to feel like you’re the only person in the world, the only _real_ person, and everyone else is just kind of phantoms, or moving at the wrong speed, like characters in a movie you’re watching with a broken projector. It’s really— isolating. I think it was always like that for him. Before Destiny, I mean. When he was growing up.”

“Yeah,” Young said carefully. “Yeah, I think so too.”

“But it’s sort of freeing, too, because you don’t have to care about people. Because it’s hard to interact with them. So you don’t ever get close. You just do math for hours and hours, and it’s easy, and it feels good, because it’s the thing that you were sort of made to do.” She flinched slightly. “Literally made to do.”

“Chloe—“ he began gently.

“No, listen. This is the part that’s hard to get right.” She paused. “With me and Matt, after, it was like _I_ was the phantom. Like it was so hard for him to actually _see_ me, and if I wanted him to see me, I had to hold so, so still. When that was the last thing I wanted to do, because I felt so alien, and I thought, if he sees me he won’t— he won’t want—“ Her voice died. “And it’s awful, that feeling, like every single part of you is getting put under a microscope. And there’s so many parts, because there’s so much _more_ to you than other people. Like a whole extra half of your body. Like you’re deformed. And you just want to hide, and you want to hate whoever it is that’s looking. And maybe— maybe you _do_ hate that person a little bit, for putting you through this, for making you want to be seen in the first place, and because— why do they get to be just— taken for granted? Why don’t they have to go under the microscope?”

She looked down. “Please don’t tell Matt,” she whispered, “that I said that.”

Young reached across the space between them without speaking, and after a brief hesitation she put her small hand in his.

“I get what you’re saying,” he said after a long pause. “I do. But it’s not— like that. I don’t think it’s like that.”

She looked at him with her large, solemn eyes. “Isn’t it?” she said. “You see him. You look at him now. I think that’s— really hard for him.”

“It’s hard for me, too,” Young said, and then wished he hadn’t said it.

“Yes,” Chloe said quietly. “I’m pretty sure he’s noticed that.”

She withdrew her hand and stood.

“You don’t have to go,” Young said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—“

“No, I should go. I told Eli that I’d come back down in an hour and talk Dr. Rush out of keeping them there all night. Oh, and—“ she smiled. “Eli and Matt and Greer and I had an idea. We thought that when you get released from the infirmary tomorrow, we could have a social gathering. Actually, Eli insists that I say ‘social gathering.’ Like that.” She performed exaggerated air quotation marks. “He also insists that I tell you that it’s not a party, since obviously we shouldn’t celebrate you getting injured and aliens almost taking over the ship. But it is really a party. We wouldn’t use extra rations. But you would be required to attend.”

Young rolled his eyes. “I suppose that’s fine. Tell Eli to do his own dirty work, next time. And I’m not responsible for getting you-know-who there.”

She smiled at him. “I’m sure I can come up with a story.” She tucked her hair behind her ears and turned towards the door.

“Chloe,” Young said.

She looked over her shoulder.

“I’m glad he talks to you,” Young said. “And I’m glad that you…” he trailed off. “Feel like you can talk to me.”

She shrugged, not seeming to know what to say to that, and after a moment she ducked out of the room.

After she’d left, the infirmary felt even more empty. Young could hear the engines humming through the walls. He felt like the only human being on the ship. But he wasn’t, of course, because he was still aware of Rush’s thinking, very far away and very abstract. Rush was in the control interface room, working on the power relays. Young brushed very faintly against his mind and didn’t stay, not wanting to be sensed, just wanting to—

He didn’t know. He wished he hadn’t brought up David Telford. He wished he hadn’t pulled away. He wished that Rush hadn’t played fucking _word games_ about whether TJ had cleared him; he wished that Rush had just _told_ him something— anything. He didn’t _understand_ Rush. He wanted them to be playing on the same side, but it always turned out that they weren’t even playing the same _game_. And Rush _knew_ that they weren’t playing the same game. He knew the whole time. He would’ve been downright shocked if it turned out they were. His whole strategy, his default approach, his _worldview_ was based around the assumption that no one else was playing his game. That should have made Young feel validated, but he just felt worse.

Worst of all was that he wanted Rush back. Or his body did, or something, which sounded— _weird_ , but he tossed and turned and couldn’t fall asleep in the infirmary without Rush being in the room: tapping on his computer or sleeping in a unsteady fog of Ancient or staring at the ceiling, ignoring Young and listening to the shields.

His arm ached. He closed his eyes. He let himself drop and drop down into his mind, finally curling on some narrow floorboard-ledge just above where he pictured Rush’s presence. He imagined himself pressing his cheek to the stone or wood or glass or whatever, listening for the faintest sound of him.

* * *

Because he was a United States Air Force officer, and not a coward, the first thing Young did after getting released from the infirmary the next day was actually go track down Rush.

Unsurprisingly, Rush was in the control interface room; Young wasn’t one hundred percent sure he’d left since Young had briefly glimpsed him there the night before. He had his feet propped up on the chair beside him, his eyes flicking back and forth between his laptop and one of the monitor screens. He didn’t look up or acknowledge Young’s presence, even after Young leaned noisily against the doorway and cleared his throat.

“Hi,” Young said at last.

Rush still didn’t look at him. “Hello.”

“I’m—” Young hesitated. “I’m kind of a jackass.”

Rush didn’t say anything.

“I’m sorry. For what I said.”

Rush nodded neutrally, his mouth a tense line. He was still typing.

“And I’m—“ Young closed his mouth. He wasn’t ready to say anything else. “Are you— okay?” he asked instead.

“Yes.”

“You look really tired.”

“You look half-dead.”

“How would you know? You won’t look at me.”

Rush’s fingers paused on the keyboard. “Yes, well,” he said tightly, without turning his head.

Young sighed. “Did you fix our— you know— connection?” he asked after a long pause.

“It’s not fixed.”

“It _seems_ fixed.”

“We improved matters by spending so much time together. As each other. In each other.” He made a choppy hand gesture. “You know what I mean.”

It was reassuring to know that Rush also struggled with figuring out how to talk about their connection.

“Still,” Rush said, in the same clipped voice, “our radius is only about thirty meters. Destiny has devised a short-term patch for the problem, which is currently ameliorating the effects. We would experience the same symptoms if we left the confines of the ship.”

“Ah,” Young said. “Is this Destiny the ship, or Destiny the AI?”

“The ship,” Rush said, sounding exhausted. “I’m trying to give it things to do.”

Young looked at him. He could see now that Rush was even more tired than he’d thought. His hands were unsteady, and his eyes looked almost bruised. Still, he didn’t look _sick_ , and maybe that was what Young was actually looking for. For some sign, something that he’d carelessly missed.

“Can I _help_ you?” Rush said shortly, sensing the focused attention.

“I… talked to TJ,” Young said.

Rush flinched. His hands drifted to the edge of the monitor bank and closed there, almost as though he were bracing himself. “I was planning on telling you,” he said. “Eventually.”

“Right,” Young said flatly. “I’m sure you were. Probably when you didn’t have any other options left.”

“Probably,” Rush agreed quietly.

“She said you weren’t surprised.”

Rush shrugged fractionally. “It was how the plague began. They were trying to effect the genetic changes necessary for ascension. They created a virus that… made them incompatible with material life, even as it facilitated the transition of matter to energy.”

“Great,” Young said. His throat was tight. “That sounds really great.”

“Oh, what does it _matter?_ ” Rush snapped, showing emotion for the first time. He pushed his laptop away and raked a shaky hand through his hair. “Does it affect you? No. It doesn’t. It’s _my_ fucking body. If you want me to apologize for deceiving you, then I’m afraid you’re going to be here all day. It’s got nothing to do with the ship, and therefore—“

“Of course it _matters,_ ” Young said loudly.

“It’s not tactically significant,” Rush said, sounding agitated. “It’s not going to affect my performance; it’s not going to—“

“ _Rush._ ” Young had to turn away for a second, facing the wall. “I don’t give a _fuck_ whether it’s _tactically_ _significant._ I mean, obviously I’m trying to keep everyone on this ship alive, so I _do_ , I _have_ to give a fuck, but that’s not—“ He shut his eyes, trying to make some sense out of what he was feeling. Principally, what he felt was that he was on the edge of an abyss— not something dark, but certainly something frightening. And if he plunged into it he wasn’t sure he would get out again. Down there in that abyss was the way he’d lain in the infirmary with his whole mind straining for any hint of Rush’s stuttering-filament brain, and the different night he’d spent when he’d woken up reaching for the body that should’ve been there, right there, and why wasn’t it, and the way he’d taken the glasses off Rush’s face when Rush was sleeping, and Rush had frowned and made that complaining noise, and—

God, he hoped Rush wasn’t catching any of what he was thinking. He really couldn’t tell. Rush was staring fixedly at the monitor bank, his face expressionless. A muscle at the side of his mouth was caught in a tic. He looked like he _could not take_ any more of this, and Young recognized the feeling.

He made a split-second decision.

“I think,” he said carefully, “that if I have to explain it, I’ll end up in violation of that code we talked about.”

Rush was silent for a moment. Then he turned his head slightly, not-quite-looking at Young for the first time. He said at last, “Is this something I’m going to be able to enforce from now on?”

Young cast his eyes towards the ceiling, mock-despairing. “God. I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?”

“No human emotion is to be permitted within fifteen meters of Nicholas Rush,” Rush said, sounding faintly satisfied.

His weather had lightened. He was hiding a powerful surge of relief. Again, Young recognized the feeling. This was what they had needed. Just this, just— letting their skin regrow while they tried not to poke at each other’s peeled-raw places. Finally Young had done something right.

“You’re going to have to think up some decent penalties, though,” Young said. “Otherwise it’s just an empty threat.”

Rush raised his eyebrows. “I assure you,” he said airily, “that none of my threats are empty.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Young said, smiling at him without really knowing why he was smiling. “Talk to me when you don’t look like you’re about to keel over. How long has it been since you _slept?_ ”

“Are you aware how many times I get asked that on a daily basis? As though sleep deprivation would explain everything about me.”

“It would clear up a lot,” Young said dryly. “Nice job not answering the question, by the way.”

“Thank you. I live for your appreciation.”

“Oh, stop being so difficult.”

“That will never happen,” Rush said.

Young rolled his eyes. “You know what you are?”

Rush’s mouth quirked. “Let me guess. A lot of work?”

“Yeah,” Young said. “But I like you anyway.”

Rush looked away quickly. Young thought he was smiling. “I’m trying to decide whether that’s a violation of the code.”

“Well,” Young said seriously, “let me know what you figure out.”

He winked and ducked out of the room, leaving Rush staring after him with a startled expression and a mind full of upended thoughts.

* * *

Eli’s “social gathering” had been in full swing for about an hour when Chloe and Rush finally showed up. Chloe clearly hadn’t told Rush where they were going, because he stopped in the doorway once he saw the crowd in the mess hall and visibly tried to back out. Chloe had an iron grip on his arm, though, and after a brief, silent tussle she whispered something in his ear that made him roll his eyes and allow himself to be tugged forwards. He still eyed the room with a mixture of disdain and suspicion, probably because it contained people having fun.

“Hey, guys,” Chloe said as the two of them approached the table where Young was sitting with Eli, Park, Greer, and Scott. “So Dr. Rush was just going to settle a little debate between me and Eli.”

“And then I’m leaving,” Rush emphasized. He was still standing. “In fact, you needn’t have saved a seat; I’m sure this will only take a moment—”

“Oh, come on,” Young said, and reached out to tug at his jacket sleeve.

Rush gave him a dirty look, but duly sank into the seat beside him. He said, “This was a trap, wasn’t it? I’ve been entrapped.”

Young shrugged. “Well, on the upside, there are drinks.”

Rush grimaced. “Do you not remember the last time?”

“Good point,” Young said. “Only _I_ should drink. I don’t think Destiny’s ready for the premiere of your accent.”

Rush glared at him. “Where I come from, that accent’s the sound of someone getting promised a kicking.”

“Well, it’s a good thing we’re in another galaxy, then,” Young said.

“Push it and see whether that protects you.” But Rush’s attention had wandered. He looked around the room, his eyes narrowing. “Why are there so many kinos in here?”

“We’re recording this for posterity,” Eli said hurriedly.

“And that requires twenty kinos?”

Eli looked nervous. “You know what? I’ll get you a drink.”

In fact, Eli brought drinks for the whole table. He had managed to get Rush about three-quarters of a way into one, and to distract him with a long discussion of something called a non-trivial quantum Yang-Mills theory that Chloe seemed to have strong opinions about, by the time Brody and Wray started setting up a viewscreen at the front of the mess. This, Young thought, was very suspicious behavior. When Wray climbed up on top of a table and clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention, he was pretty sure that something was about to go down.

“Attention, everybody!” Wray called. She was a little wobbly, either because she’d been drinking or because her heeled shoes weren’t designed for standing on tabletops. “As you all know, we have gathered you here today because we’ve had three teams claim to have won Destiny Bingo.”

Young frowned. “What the hell is Destiny Bingo?” he asked the table at large.

“I’ve just remembered that I—“ Rush began, and tried to make his escape. But Chloe, ever-vigilant, pulled him back into his chair.

Greer reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small card divided into a five-by-five grid. He passed it over to Young. Each box was filled with very small neat handwriting.

“There are a couple of people,” Wray said, “who haven’t yet been introduced to Destiny Bingo, for the very practical reason that they feature in the game. So here to explain the rules, I give you: Destiny Bingo mastermind Eli Wallace!”

Eli shot Young and Rush a guilty look in passing.

“Night shifts for a _week_ ,” Rush hissed at him. “And I don’t even know what it is you’ve done yet.”

“Hey, guys,” Eli said, climbing onto the table next to Wray. “So, the original idea for this came out of the fact that Colonel Young and Dr. Rush are total killjoys who have absolutely no appreciation of art, by which I mean that neither of them ever wants to put anything down for the record on the kino footage I’m going to use for my eventual Oscar-winning documentary film. Or, like, winner of some military version of the Oscars, because none of this will ever be declassified, but whatever.”

“Get to the good part!” Greer yelled.

//I’m leaving,// Rush said.

//Don’t you dare.// Young closed a hand over his arm. //If I have to sit through this, so do you.//

Rush looked at his hand, but didn’t shake it off.

“So Chloe and I made up these cards,” Eli said, holding up an example, “with different events involving Rush or Young that people had to capture on kino footage. And the idea was that you get five squares in a row to win.”

Young looked at the card Greer had given him.

 _Young tells Rush he’s A.L.O.W._ was the first square. _Rush says something nice about Volker_ was the second.

“Okay,” Eli said, “so— since we have three teams claiming victory, we’re going to vote on the best overall compilation. We’ll start with Team Future Perfect, which is Brody and Volker.” He leaned over to start his computer.

“Please let me form no memories of this,” Rush said.

“First up we’ve got square D1,” Eli said. “ _Rush volunteers a piece of personal information._ ”

_Rush is sitting in the control interface room, his feet propped on the monitor bank, swiveling absently back and forth in his chair as he chews on a pencil, watching something on his laptop._

_“I don’t know,” Brody says from somewhere just below the kino. “I can imagine it. You just swap someone on the stones real quick:_ Hi, can we get a pizza? _And the next thing you know, it’s coming through the gate. Hot and fresh. Maybe from that place over by PPCC with the hand-rolled crust?_ ”

_“Oh, what,” Volker says derisively, just visible to the left. “Like the Air Force is going to order you a pizza, let the delivery guy in through security, and then just send it through the gate?”_

_“Yeah. Why not? Just chuck it right through there, still in the box.”_

_“Um, no one is going to open a super-powerful tear in spacetime just because you’ve got the munchies.”_

_“I don’t think you know what the munchies is,” Brody says. “If I’ve got the munchies, it means they sent something else through first. Which they totally should, by the way. I know we’re not exactly terminal cancer patients, but come on. Everyone on this ship could stand to take it down a notch.”_

_“Whatever. My point is, they’re not going to send you pizza. That’s like a twelve dollar pizza and a two million dollar energy bill. Or like— I don’t even know what it would cost to dial here.”_

_“Yeah, but that’s the whole point of the hypothetical. They can’t dial here. But_ assuming they could _. And assuming it wouldn’t cost however many millions of dollars.”_

_“Well, you didn’t specify that part.”_

_“I’m saying just plain pepperoni. No fancy stuff.”_

_“You know what they put in pepperoni?”_

_“Uh, is it worse than what they put in that protein mix?”_

_Volker looks across the room. “What about you, Rush?” he asks, with an audible note of daring._

_Rush very slowly looks up from his laptop, a little like a snake uncoiling. “What.”_

_“If Stargate Command could dial us, like regular dialing, and if it wasn’t going to cost a million bucks, and if the pizza guy could get past security at the Mountain, what would you pick as your pizza topping?”_

_Rush fixes them both with a disbelieving stare. There’s a long silence._

_“Or do they not have pizza in Scotland,” Volker adds._

_Rush’s eyes narrow dangerously. “We have pizza in Scotland. It’s not Outer fucking Mongolia.”_

_“Okay, so what would you pick as your topping, then?”_

_Now Rush looks suspicious. “Why do you want to know?”_

_“All right,” Brody says. “Geez. I didn’t realize it was a state secret.”_

_“I bet they don’t really have pizza in Scotland,” Volker says under his breath._

_Rush’s eyes narrow even further. “Goat cheese and spinach,” he snaps. “And those power relays had better be diagrammed by the time I come over there.”_

_Volker looks at the kino and rolls his eyes._

The mess hall erupted in cheering and laughter.

Rush dug the heel of one hand into his eye socket. //This is intolerable.//

//Oh, hush.//

“All right,” Eli said. “That was certainly very revealing. Of how Brody spent his college years, if nothing else. Anyway, next up we’ve got square D2: _Rush deliberately baits Young."_

_“Rush,” Young says, leaning against the doorway of the control interface room._

_“Colonel,” Rush greets him. “Always a pleasure.” He doesn’t look up from the monitor he’s at._

_“Did you send that report on the hyperdrive element to the SGC?”_

_“They received the information yesterday,” Rush says absently._

_“Did_ you _send it? Because they specifically wanted your thoughts on the control crystals.”_

_“All the requisite information was included.”_

_“You know, I am actually capable of recognizing the passive voice when it’s being a pain in the ass.”_

_“I’m astonished,” Rush says, still typing. “Don’t inform the Air Force. They’ll boot you out.”_

_“What I’m getting from this is that you didn’t send it. Who sent it? Did you even_ write _the report?”_

_Rush looks up briefly, his mouth quirking. “You’ve become a much more sophisticated conversational partner, you know. I attribute that to my influence.”_

_Young ducks his head. It’s hard to tell if he’s sighing or smiling. “Strategic praise_ and _a deflection.”_

_“I see you know my tactics well.” Rush returns to his laptop._

_“Rush.”_

_“Hmm?” Rush blinks at Young._

_Young rolls his eyes. “The report?”_

_“Yes, yes.” Rush waves his hand vaguely. “I had Volker take care of it. I’ll send them something eventually.”_

_“Rush,” Young says again in a tone of exasperation._

_Rush shrugs eloquently, as though to suggest helplessness._

_The camera suddenly pans around to Eli, who’s been standing behind it. “Oh, my God,” Eli whispers. “I can’t take any more of this. They need to get a room al— wait, did you just film this? This better not end up in Destiny Bingo. I’m going to disqualify you. I have that power! You know I do!”_

“And, yeah,” Eli said good-naturedly, “You’re totally disqualified for that. No humiliation of the game mastermind is allowed.”

This announcement was met by a chorus of mixed boos and cheers from the crowd.

//Do I _bait_ you?// Rush asked.

//Yeah, but when you catch me, you always throw me back.//

There was a pause as they listened to Eli announce, “Next up, we have Team Matt & Chloe! Wow, very creative, guys, I can tell you spent a lot of time on the name.”

//I don’t know enough about fishing to tell if that’s good thing or a bad thing,// Rush said finally.

Young glanced at him. He wasn’t looking at Young. //I think it depends on what the fisherman wants from the fish,// Young said.

* * *

The whole thing dragged on for a seemingly-interminable fifteen minutes. Ultimately it was the “Destiny’s Angels” team of TJ, Park, and Wray who won the prize of “lifelong respect and a mention in the credits of Eli’s documentary.” Their compilation had included square B2, _Young does something other than work_ (a scene of Young nodding along to a Talking Heads song during his brief appearance at a crew trivia night in the mess), square A2, _Rush says something nice about Volker_ (which had required some extensive engineering by Chloe to achieve), and square C2: _Rush passes out somewhere he’s not supposed to_ (a spectacular montage that included Rush curled up under a CI room monitor hugging his laptop, Rush passed out midway through an FTL drive repair with two control crystals still clutched in his hands, and Rush falling asleep while eating a bowl of protein mix, narrowly avoiding a full-on faceplant).

To his credit, Rush stuck around for the whole thing, looking increasingly incredulous and harassed. Maybe he was just too tired to get up from the table, or maybe it was the fact that for much of the presentation Young prevented him from escaping with a hand on his arm. But there was only so much general goodwill Rush could take without suffering some kind of emotional aneurysm, so Young let him slip away after the presentation of the award.

He himself stayed for several more hours, watching the night slowly disintegrate into the party that Eli had insisted it wasn’t going to be. Chloe was a prominent figure out on the dance floor, and Young watched her for a while. She looked like she was in her element. She looked so natural, so comfortable, so at ease. But he couldn’t help remembering their conversation. He wondered how hard she was working at any given moment to look like the girl people wanted her to be, and not like some stranger, lonelier person. He hoped that Matt realized that. He hoped that she could be herself with him.

After a while, Eli crossed the room, doing some kind of rhythmic jerking that was probably supposed to be a dance. He handed Young a drink. He had a vaguely apologetic expression. “Hey,” he said. “Um, sorry about the kino thing. I started it before the stuff with the chair, but then it seemed like I couldn’t really just stop it? People would have gotten suspicious. But I totally screened everything that went in, except for that thing Brody inserted at the last minute. He’s really sneaky.”

“It was fine,” Young said tolerantly. “Even Rush wasn’t— well, he wasn’t apoplectic, which is probably the best you were going to get. Plus, I think people liked it. They needed something like that.”

“In that case, do you think you can protect me from Rush? I’m pretty sure he was _not_ kidding about those night shifts.”

Young gave him a disbelieving look. “You think he listens to me?”

“Uh, yeah? More than he listens to anyone else, for sure.”

“Right,” Young said skeptically.

Eli waved an unsteady hand. “Fine. Don’t accept my wise observations, which actually reflect pretty well on you, except I guess if you think that actually winning Rush’s undying affection is a bad thing, which, I mean, it’s not like I _can’t_ see the logic in that, it’s just that—”

“Undying—?” Young choked back a laugh. He put a hand on Eli’s shoulder and looked him very seriously in the eye. “Eli,” he said, “you’re drunk.”

Eli sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “Fine. But you’ll talk to him about it? Right?”

“Yeah,” Young promised. “Sure.”

He watched Eli sidle back across the dance floor, stopping briefly to do some kind of bizarre hip-hop move with Chloe and Matt. It made Young feel old. When had he gotten so old?

He sipped his drink. Finally, he turned to face the shadowy figure who’d appeared halfway through his conversation with Eli, leaning against the far lefthand wall. “So are you going to talk to me, or what?”

Sheppard— or the AI— tilted its head and quirked an eyebrow.

“I mean, I figured you weren’t here for the party. No offense, but this doesn’t really seem like your scene.”

“You do not know me,” the AI said. “You do not know my scene.”

There was something wistful in its eyes as it looked out at the partygoers. Maybe that was just because it looked like Sheppard, who always kind of looked weirdly wistful, even when he was supposedly happy, or who maybe just always looked kind of alone.

“No,” Young said. “I guess that’s true.”

“However, you are correct,” the AI said. “I require your presence.”

It gestured, and Young followed it out of the mess. In comparison to the bright noise of the party, the corridors seemed especially silent and dark.

“If you’re here to tear me a new one,” Young said, when the AI didn’t immediately offer more information, “we might as well get it over with. I’ve been expecting it for about a day and a half.”

The AI was quiet for a long time. “This has been a difficult time for both of you,” it said finally.

“Yeah,” Young said. “Yeah, I guess so.”

It looked troubled. It slouched its shoulders and ran a hand through its spiky hair. But it didn’t say anything.

“I noticed you’re not Gloria anymore, with Rush,” Young said. “You looked like Daniel Jackson when you told us how to distract the ship.”

“Yes.”

“Why? You told me that we make you look like what you look like. Somehow I’m pretty sure Rush hasn’t got Daniel Jackson on the brain.”

The AI stopped walking, biting its lip and looking down. “Yes. What you say is correct. But— there were several occasions on which he found it difficult to separate me from Gloria. The real Gloria. This seemed— not ideal.”

Young stared at it for a second and then turned away, his hands clenching into fists. He almost couldn’t speak at first through the rage. “ _Not ideal?_ God, no wonder he’s— you realize this is _just_ what he needs right now. I mean, you realize that, right? Just really A+, perfect. Something else that’s going to mercilessly fuck with him.”

“That’s why I stopped!” the AI said defensively, its voice rising. “It was not my intention to cause him pain.”

“Right, it’s never your intention. It’s always just a side-effect of doing whatever the fuck it is you decide to do. You don’t _mean_ to cause him harm; it’s just _better for the ship_ if he’s infected with a fucking _virus_ , and gets bolts through his feet and wrists, and has to constantly tear himself up, and never gets any sleep—”

“It is not _my_ fault that he does not sleep!” it said, its manner oddly accusatory.

Young narrowed his eyes at it. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

It looked away. “I do not control him,” it said. “I do not _make_ him do anything.”

“I don’t think I believe that.”

“Believe what you like. It has no bearing on me. You fail to see that you and I are in the same position.”

“And what position is that?” Young asked acerbically.

“You also wish to control him, because you do not wish him to be hurt. Yet the very act of control alters the object of your protection, and you find you have damaged him, although this was what you intended to prevent. The equation that allows for maximal protection while preserving the preponderance of his selfhood is a complex one. There are many variables involved. Perhaps your algorithms are better suited than mine to solve it.”

Young sighed and brought a hand up to his forehead. “I don’t understand what any of that means.”

It stuck its hands in its pockets and looked away. It seemed upset for some reason. “It is evident that you do not.”

A moment passed.

The AI resumed its walking. Young trailed it, a step or two behind.

“So you could look like anyone,” Young persisted after a while. “You just let yourself look like Sheppard.”

“This is the form your subconscious chooses for me. Is it unsuitable?”

“No. No, it just—“ Young paused. “It’s just always— weird. I don’t know how to feel about it. I guess it reminds me of someone it’d be easier to forget. Maybe. I don’t know.”

The AI frowned at him over its shoulder. “I don’t understand what any of that means,” it said pointedly.

“Great. Now it’s got a sense of humor.”

“Nick tells me that I do not.”

“Well, his sense of humor is… specialized.”

“He has attempted to teach me how to construct a pun.”

Young stopped in his tracks for a second, unable to decide if he was amused or horrified. “Oh, my God. I would pay to see that.”

It looked away. It said softly, “Gloria was very good at puns.”

Young’s smile faded. He had the strangest urge to say that he was sorry. Instead he said nothing for a long time.

By now they were very deep into the ship, possibly under the gate room, near Destiny’s keel. The hallways were all empty, and their lights were powered down. But they didn’t feel abandoned, exactly. Just— quiet. Young could see why Rush would come down here.

He followed the AI down a long, straight stretch of corridor for a pretty good length of time. Finally, the AI said, “I will choose another form if you wish. As a— favor. This is the correct word. A person does not have to reciprocate a favor.”

It sounded like it was reciting something that it had been told. Young looked at it– its eyes that carried a curious seriousness, its rumpled jacket with the sleeves rolled up. He felt that sense of uneasiness he’d had from the start, the sense of knowing and not-knowing someone at the same time, and wanting to _know_ , wanting—“No,” he said, his throat tight. “It’s okay. I just— feel like you’re trying to tell me something, and I don’t know what it is.”

It regarded him steadily. “Perhaps you are trying to tell yourself something,” it said.

Ahead of them, a door opened to their left, letting a broad and fan-shaped spill of golden light out into the hall. The AI motioned Young into the room, where Rush was sitting at a table with his laptop in front of him. He wasn’t typing; his hands were resting limply on the keyboard. His eyes were unfocused. The screen of the laptop had gone black.

With a reflexive horror, Young reached out to Rush, but his mind was dismantled, half-dispersed in the circuitry of the ship.

“Shit,” Young said. “What happened?”

“It wasn’t his fault,” the AI said quietly. It leaned against the edge of the table, its arms crossed, looking very intently at Rush. “He was tracing power relays, and he was tired. It’s easier for him without a computer, but he has difficulty grounding himself.”

Young closed his eyes. “I know he does,” he said.

The AI’s eyes flickered to him. It seemed to be hesitating over what to say next. “He has been trying to protect you from the pressure of the ship for two days now,” it said. “It makes things more difficult for him.”

Young frowned at it, not understanding.

“When he pulled Destiny into your mind on the shuttle, he nearly killed you.”

“No,” Young said, shaking his head. “No, that’s not— something was wrong for a minute, but he fixed it. I would have felt it if anything was wrong.”

“Such injuries don’t hurt.”

“You’re wrong,” Young said again.

“You needed time to recover. But as a consequence, he has been more accessible to the ship.”

Young sighed. “He needs to not—“ he murmured, and then broke off, rubbing his forehead. “Never mind. I don’t even know what the point is. He’s not going to pay attention to anything I tell him to do. I can pull him out, though? It’s not going to— cause any problems?”

“You are free to separate him.” Sheppard was gazing at Rush again, with an expression that Young found difficult to interpret. “I wish that you— would find a way to do so that does not cause both of you pain. You are angry with me for hurting him. But you hurt each other. And it is not required.”

“Oh,” Young said. He felt wrongfooted. He said uncertainly, “Any tips?”

“No,” Sheppard whispered, still looking at Rush. “I have no tips.”

It disappeared.

Young stared at the empty air where he’d been, feeling oddly abandoned.

Then he turned his attention to Rush. For a while he just stood there, considering what the AI had said. Rush had always used pain to separate himself from the ship, and Young had adopted that attitude without questioning it. He’d assumed that he was fighting with the ship for Rush, like Rush was— a piece of territory or something, one that both Young and Destiny wanted. Getting Rush back felt like tearing him out of someone else’s grip. But after the SGC had swapped Young out with Telford, Rush had gone entirely into the ship, and Young had been aware of him for the first time as a hundred thousand somethings that wanted to stay there— a hundred thousand somethings that had to be, well, _seduced_ back to being a self.

Being a self wasn’t always easy for Rush. He seemed like he had a tenuous grasp on it, like he wasn’t really committed to the whole idea. It predated Telford and his fucking benchmarks, though that definitely hadn’t helped; Young could remember being Rush in the interface and wanting to get out of his body, to climb a magic ladder to nowhere and be nothing at all. And that had been before everything else. So in that sense the ship was offering Rush his lifelong fucking dream: you don’t have to be you anymore; you don’t have to be anyone; you can just be music and information streams and code.

As though the rest was just hard work, the rest was just frightening, the rest was just all the parts that could be hurt.

No wonder Rush didn’t want to come back. No wonder it always felt like fighting, even when Rush did it to himself.

Young closed his eyes. Quietly, he sat down in the chair opposite Rush and moved the laptop aside. After a considering moment, he took his sling off, freeing his right arm up, and reached across the narrow table to take Rush’s hands. They were cold, and he let them rest in his grasp, warming. He didn’t _have_ to do this, he thought. From the first, he’d told himself that he _had_ to touch Rush, that it was the best way to get their connection to work. He’d tried to think of it as something clinical, not a question of bodies touching but of… units interacting, or something, for maximum function. A circuit closing. And maybe it did feel a little like a circuit closing, like something wild and electric was being channeled between him and Rush, but he didn’t think it had anything to do with maximum function. With the raw physical contact? Maybe. Or with the fact that he felt weirdly privileged to get to touch Rush’s hands. Rush had beautiful hands. Young turned them in his grip so that they lay face-up and he could see the lines that crossed each palm. Lifelines: long life, broken life; someone had taught him that once. He smoothed his thumb over that fortune-telling map, following the minor lines till he touched the point where they came together, in the little notch right at the base of the wrist.

And then he was aware of Rush suddenly, out in the ship and around him— after all, he was inside the ship, even though he tended to think of it as _out there_ — a presence that wasn’t really a presence but was _something_ , a vague shape picked out in lots and lots of little bits of thread. They were curious about Young, those threads; they wanted him to come closer. The air in the room warmed slightly. Young’s mouth quirked up at that. //No,// he thought at the threads. //I can’t be like you are. You’ll have to come back here.//

They didn’t know how. But he could show them; he could start untangling them. He found the points where ship became not-ship and very gently tugged at the not-ship-colored threads until they came unraveled and he could reel them all the way back to Rush. The threads liked this game, because they wanted to be touched and they liked being looked at by him. As more and more of them came loose, there was that nervous, furtive sort of consciousness, and it was very unsure that it wanted to exist. But Young kept stroking his thumbs against Rush’s palms and thought in a directionless way about how nice it was, how warm and comfortable he felt, how relaxed, and the nascent consciousness found that idea appealing. //Come back,// Young projected towards it. Are you going to be there, it thought; or didn’t think, really, but more-or-less communicated towards him. And it decided that it wanted to be there if that was where Young was.

At one point they ran into trouble when that consciousness became more distinctly Rush-like, and Rush was vaguely aware that he had gotten lost in the ship. He panicked and started to flex his left foot, trying to hurt himself. But: //No,// Young said, and muffled him in reassurance. //There’s nothing wrong. It’s okay. It’s okay.// For a moment, the ship gained ground, because Rush was still anxious, projecting a wavering distress that seemed to come from far away, and the ship did not like that, and Rush was always prone to erosion. So Young focused on the physical sensations in his body again. The brush of his skin against Rush’s skin, which was all at once soft and electrifying and hypnotic; the warmth of the room; the quiet of their breathing, as though they were the only two people in the world. //Come back,// Young said again. //It’s just us two here.//

And Rush— _was_ coming back, without any struggle. All of the threads of him were beginning to relax again, eager to go with Young back towards being human.

It seemed to get easier once Rush was minimally aware of his body; every time Young stroked his thumb across the base of Rush’s wrist, a whole handful of threads came loose. But then, at the very last, they hit a kind of plateau. Rush was mostly conscious, but still thinking in Ancient, his eyes unfocused, his mind just… not quite _there._

His first instinct was, as always, to hurt himself. But Young stopped him once more from flexing his foot.

//You don’t have to do that,// he thought. //That’s not what it’s about. It can be good.//

He let his hands skim up Rush’s forearms, pushing back the oversized jacket sleeves. The skin thus revealed was oddly defenseless. Or was that just a tactical reflex? Was he stuck in the rut of soldier-think? But he wasn’t thinking about strategy. He didn’t want to hurt or protect Rush. He just wanted to touch that bare and lightly freckled skin, and so he did, his fingertips tracing the lines of the tendons up and down first one arm, then the other.

Rush’s breath hitched. He shivered. The last of his mind settled. He blinked, startled, his eyes focusing on Young.

They looked at each other. For a moment, neither of them moved.

“Hi,” Young said quietly.

“Hello,” Rush whispered.

 


	20. Chapter 20

“That was new,” Rush said, his face difficult to interpret.

“Yeah,” Young said. With a measure of reluctance, he drew his hands back.

Rush hesitated, then quickly pushed his jacket sleeves down. He stared at the table, hugging his arms tightly across his chest.

There was a brief silence.

“—If it’s easier,” Rush began haltingly. A very faint flush was visible on his cheekbones. “You should feel free to continue— using that method.”

“Good,” Young said. “I will. It is.”

“Better.”

“Yes.”

“More efficient.”

Young nodded.

“I’m—“ Rush cleared his throat, still staring at the table. “Did you move my laptop?”

“Mm-hm,” Young said. “It’s two in the morning. You really want it back?”

Rush frowned at him, uncomprehending.

“Don’t give me that,” Young said. “You’re familiar with the idea of sleeping at night. I know you are. I’ve seen you do it.”

Rush shrugged dismissively.

Something occurred to Young. “…How long have you been awake?”

“It’s immaterial,” Rush said airily, tossing his hair back.

Young _had_ seen Rush sleep at night, sure. But not in the past few days. Rush had a nasty habit of waking up before Young, and not always falling asleep before he did. It made trying to track his sleep patterns very difficult, as Young was certain Rush knew perfectly well.

“Rush,” he said.

“I’m clearly functional; you’re being unnecessarily insistent on—“

“I literally _just_ had to separate you from the ship,” Young said, a note of incredulity creeping into his voice. “How long?”

Defiantly, Rush said, “Sixty-seven hours.”

Young stared at him.

Rush made a face, eloquently communicating his exasperation and contempt at the idea that his answer might cause any alarm.

“So you haven’t slept since before we boarded the seed ship,” Young said levelly.

“That’s correct.”

“Do you just—“ Young leaned back, staring at the ceiling, and ran a hand through his unruly hair. He didn’t even know where to start. “Do you not understand biology? Is that, like, the one subject you failed in high school? Do you look at biology textbooks and lose the ability to read? You’re still more-or-less _human_. And don’t you dare—“ he said, pointing a ferocious finger at Rush as Rush opened his mouth— “don’t you dare even _think_ about saying some stupid, shitty thing like _Not for long_ , or— I don’t even want to know what you’d come up with.”

Rush shut his mouth, looking uncharacteristically chastened.

“ _Thank_ you,” Young said. “Come on. Let’s go.” He stood.

Rush gave him a sullen look. “And where are we going?”

“You’re going to sleep. You’re sick; you need to rest. I don’t care where you do it. If you—“ Young paused, suddenly uncomfortable. “I mean, you don’t have to— obviously we can separate now, so if you don’t want to— that’s certainly—“

Rush didn’t say anything. He was staring at the table, his mouth a tense line.

The silence stretched.

“Well,” Young said into the pause, “you can think about it while you walk, I guess.”

He reached out to give Rush a hand up from his chair. Rush made it about three-quarters of the way to standing before the spins hit him. He grabbed at the table, shutting his eyes tightly as Young tried to steady him.

“God,” Young said venomously. “‘Clearly functional,’ my ass. You _idiot._ ”

“Oh, fuck off,” Rush snapped, finally losing his temper. “I’ve been staying awake so I could keep the ship from pulling on your mind while you tried to not _die_ , and then tried to recover from not-quite- _dying_ , all right?”

Young grimaced and looked away. “Yeah,” he said after a minute. “Sorry. The AI told me. Thanks.”

He picked up Rush’s laptop, like that was some kind of apologetic gesture.

“Don’t thank me,” Rush said shortly, picking up his crutch. He headed for the door. “You talked to the AI? What else did it tell you?”

Young followed him, thinking about how to answer. “We talked,” he said finally.

Rush glanced at him suspiciously. “That’s an insufficient fucking answer.”

“You did not just utter those words.”

Rush made a curt, dismissive gesture. “Yes, well. So consistency isn’t one of my flaws.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Young said. “You have your moments.”

They were out in the dark hallways now, not having to look at each other, and Young was hoping to bring the pitch of the conversation down. He’d been serious about Rush sleeping, and he was pretty sure that it wasn’t going to happen if they just kept on riling each other up. Rush was never going to be the one to de-escalate a conversation. So if it was de-escalation Young wanted, he was always going to be on the hook.

“Hmm.” Rush at least didn’t sound absolutely furious. As they passed by a line of emergency lighting, it pulsed brighter in response to Rush’s presence, and for a moment Young could glimpse his face: pensive and wary in the blue glow. “Are you familiar with the tale of the frog and the scorpion?”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve heard it a time or two,” Young said. “The scorpion asks the frog to carry him across the river. The frog agrees, the scorpion stings him, they both drown. Right?”

Rush smiled humorlessly, staring fixedly ahead. “It’s a story much beloved by Colonel Telford.”

Young bit back a surge of distaste. “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” he remarked.

“He always espoused the conventional reading of the story, which holds that the key mistake is the frog’s, for thinking that a scorpion could ever change its nature. I thought that the mistake was the scorpion’s, for trying to be some other kind of animal than it was. Why ask the frog for a ride in the first place? It should never have tried to get across the river. Nothing in the story leads us to believe it couldn’t have have lived perfectly well without seeing the other side.”

Young shot him a sharp look. “Not much a life,” he said. “In my opinion.”

Rush smiled humorlessly. “You’re assuming you know how to decode the parable. But I haven’t told you what we’re talking about.”

“I thought we were talking about scorpions and frogs,” Young said mildly.

“We’re talking about consistency,” Rush said.

They had come to the central part of the ship, where the hallways were better lighted. In a few turns, they’d be at Young’s quarters. Or at Rush’s, in a few different turns. Rush paused, leaning against a bulkhead with his arms crossed. He didn’t say anything. He looked… very tired.

“You’re not the scorpion in that story,” Young said quietly. “You know that, right?”

Rush’s eyes flickered to him. “What makes you think anyone suggested I was?”

Young gave him an eloquent look. “And anyway,” he said, “maybe even scorpions deserve the chance to—“

“To what?” Rush said coolly. “To sacrifice more frogs?”

“To see what life is like on the other side of the river. Maybe that’s what would have finally changed the scorpion’s tune. If he’d held out a little longer, who knows what might’ve happened?”

Rush raked a fretful hand through his hair and didn’t answer.

Young studied him for a moment and then looked carefully away. “Well,” he said with deliberate casualness. “I’m heading to bed, I guess. You coming?”

He turned away and started walking in the direction of his quarters. He heard Rush hesitate, then follow him a beat behind.

They walked like that without speaking till they reached the next intersection. Then Young said, with that same careful, casual, everyday air, “So did you figure out if the Nakai were able to make any modifications to the ship’s systems?”

Rush said acerbically, “Don’t you think I’d have told you by now if that were the case?”

“Earlier I had to watch a three-minute kino clip of you refusing to even tell me if you’d sent a report.”

Rush grimaced. “Please don’t force me to relive that experience.”

“What I’m saying is, I’m well aware that you just sidestepped my question.”

“Hmm.” Rush seemed amused. “You _are_ getting better at this.”

“‘Yes, Colonel Young,’” Young said, “‘the Nakai _were_ able to make the following modifications.’ ‘No, Colonel Young, the straightforward answer is…’” He left an encouraging pause.

“The latter,” Rush said. “They did attempt to embed an executable program in the mainframe that would have allowed them to remotely deactivate Destiny’s shields. However, attempt is the key term. They aren’t as computationally sophisticated as one might expect, but that may be a function of their limited experience with Ancient systems.”

“From the projection thing we found on the obelisk planet, it seems like they’ve been pursuing Destiny for a long time.”

“True,” Rush said. His thoughts had increased in volume. They’d been barely perceptible before, but a storm was building now on the horizon of his weather, something unfocused, out-of-kilter, and turbulent. “My impression of them is that they are persistent and long-lived, but not very adaptable. There’s not much common ground between our species. To them, we’re just these bizarre, ephemeral, delicate little creatures, easily manipulated and unworthy of that which we—“

With the taste of water, the quick onrush of panic, and the familiar sense of icy suffocation that came from drowning in an observation tank, Young felt Rush’s flashback coming before Rush himself did.

_He is in the water and he does not like the water and he cannot get out of the water oh god oh god and he is breathing in like he breathed in when David— and he is breathing in choking lungs spasming like he did when— and he must get out he CANNOT GET OUT this is the ultimate animal revenge think yourself out of this one Nick can’t you oh you’re not so clever as all that but he MUST he MUST MUST MUST push his fists against the glass over and over and is it glass even will it breaks everything breaks even—_

_—the door opens and he is_  
_pulled into a disgusting faux-Rustic American cabin with_  
_a deer’s head mounted over the fire for God’s sake and_  
_the door slams closed behind them and Young says_  
Whew! That was one hell of a gullywasher! They normally don’t  
get that bad out here _and Rush has to calibrate the exact right_  
_brand of disdain with which to say incredulously, Gullywasher?_  
_And Young says_ You are not seriously giving me shit  
about the way I talk.

 _—the glass breaks and he is_  
_on the floor sad cold and sopping but_  
_he has to get up he MUST get up he can’t_  
_just lie here shivering thinking of how they left him_  
_for dead or he will not GET UP and spit his goddamn_  
_fate back in their teeth and—_

 _Something is_  
_happening here_  
_he’s_  
 

Hey _, Young says, snapping his fingers._ Pay attention. Jesus,  
you’re not hypothermic are you? Come on, I’ve got blankets  
over here and like a fifth of whiskey. _I’m certain that it’s inferior_  
_whiskey._ I literally could have scripted that response. God you're so  
predictable. _He comes back with an enormous flannel duvet_  
_and insists on wrapping it around Rush. Then he has the_  
_temerity to laugh and say You’re like an angry caterpillar._  
I’m going back out in the rainstorm _Rush says but he doesn’t._  
_Young pours two fingers of whiskey in a glass and hands_  
_it to him._ Let me get a fire going _he says._ Quickest way  
to dry out things that need drying. _And he knows how to_  
_start a fire of course because he’s a caveman. But Rush_  
_has to admit that there’s something pleasant about the_  
_smell of the whiskey and the heat from the fire and the_  
_rain that can’t get to him because he’s safe now safe and—_

 _Something is_  
_happening here_  
_something is—_  
_something—_

They stared at each other.

“That was,” Young murmured. “That was the cabin I used to rent up in Taos. I haven’t thought about that place in ages.” He felt dazed and a little strange. He’d acted on instinct, not totally aware of what he was doing, just wanting to get Rush _out_. He hadn’t realized that it would be so easy to do it— that he was capable of altering Rush’s thoughts. He’d reached in and _yanked_ — and Rush had just sort of— _followed_ him.

“You,” Rush said uncertainly. “You were there too? What did you—“ His gaze sharpened suddenly and became something more panicked. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Young said, uncomprehending. “It just felt like a memory I shouldn’t have, or—like I was dreaming, for some reason.” He frowned and rubbed his head. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—“

“I’m not sure you did anything,” Rush said. He was still regarding Young with a worry that his mind couldn’t get under control. “Tell me about the cabin.”

“You were just there,” Young said. “It was— in the mountains. I used to head down there from Colorado Springs, meet up with some of my old buddies from Holloman. That’s right outside Alamogordo, where I used to be stationed, so Taos is about the halfway point.”

“Why did you think about it just now?”

“I don’t know; I just—“ Young found himself uncomfortable under Rush’s stare. “I don’t know why it came to mind. You were thinking about water; it was really loud; I guess I wanted to— go somewhere dry.” He didn’t want to tell Rush that he had literally dragged Rush with him. He was pretty sure that wouldn’t go over well.

Rush didn’t look reassured by what Young had said.

“Look,” Young said. “It was really nothing. We’re both tired. Sometimes our minds overlap. I think the takeaway here is that you need some sleep.”

He started walking again, and again Rush followed. But Young could feel the unhappy eddies of his thoughts, slowed by exhaustion yet churning fiercely in a response that seemed way out of proportion to what had actually occurred.

“Fire-starting is an important skill, by the way,” Young said, hoping to distract Rush by giving him the chance to disparage him and/or get defensive.

Sure enough: “I can start a fire,” Rush said defensively.

Young bit back a smile. “I see. So you just wanted an excuse to call me a caveman.”

“I don’t recall giving you permission to go poking about in my head.”

“Relax. That was alarmingly unincriminating.” Young rolled his eyes.

Rush frowned. “Alarmingly?”

“It makes me wonder if you’ve got some kind of a firewall going on up here.” He turned and tapped his index finger against Rush’s forehead.

Rush scowled, but was distracted from a no-doubt-venomous reply by the door to Young’s quarters sliding open for them.

By the time it had slid shut again behind them, the scowl had vanished. Instead, he had gone back to that slightly frightened, nervous look. He stepped closer to Young, setting his crutch against the sofa. “I need to—” he said intently. “Can I just—?”

Young didn’t know what he meant. “Sure?” he said, letting Rush’s laptop land on the sofa cushions. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, by the way.”

“No,” Rush said softly. “I know you don’t.”

He was _?_ at the barrier between their minds, and Young bemusedly opened up to him. Then Rush took his hands in a light cool grasp and gently entered his head, a very very cautious and over-quiet presence that seemed afraid to disturb any place where he went. It was the strangest sensation Young could possibly imagine, like being a European city with a tourist wandering through your historic parts, eyeing the art skeptically, inspecting the ancient buildings, and climbing the winding stairs up to the cathedrals’ lofts. But— in such a _Rush_ way, with such a flood of anxiety, irritation, obscure calculations, and Ancient that Young was hit by a very complete and exact picture of what Rush would be like to travel with, accompanied by an unexpected wave of fondness.

“Why are you smiling?” Rush asked vaguely.

“It’s just a really peculiar feeling. I don’t know. Kind of… euphoric, I think?" It was the right word. He felt incredibly peaceful. 

Rush withdrew gradually from his mind, releasing his hands.

“You shouldn’t,” he said. “You shouldn’t feel euphoric.” He bit his lip, turning to lean against the sofa. He looked weary.

“… What did you just do?” Young asked.

“I’m trying to repair the damage I did. When I moved into your mind on the shuttle, I nearly destroyed your cognitive architecture. Destiny was too… much. I tried to fix it, but—“

“I feel fine,” Young interrupted. “Really. I do.” So the AI had been telling the truth, he thought. But he _did_ feel fine; he felt… totally normal.

“It’s in the nature of psychic injury to have no insight into itself,” Rush said.

“It was the right tactical decision, anyway. You wouldn’t have been able to separate from Destiny if you hadn’t done it. We needed you. _I_ needed you. You did the best possible thing you could. So just— stop worrying about it.”

“I’m not sure what the long-term effects will be.”

“There aren’t even any short-term effects.”

“If something should happen to me—“

“Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

Rush looked down. There was a long pause.

“You should sleep,” he said finally.

“I’m not the one who’s been up for sixty-seven hours. You want to feel guilty? Let’s put it to good use. You’re coming to bed.”

Rush made an irritated face. “You’re very fucking single-minded.”

“Yup. So you might as well give in now.”

Young didn’t expect that to be the end of it. He fully expected to have to drag Rush to bed kicking and screaming, or— well— the Rush version of that, which would probably require something more along the lines of subterfuge and some very subtle manipulation. So he was surprised to find, when he emerged from the bathroom a short time later, his face damp and his teeth brushed, that Rush was perched on the far side of the bed already. He had even shed his jacket in a concession to the idea of sleeping, though he had his laptop balanced on his knees and was tapping away at it.

Young stripped down to his t-shirt and boxers and climbed under the duvet.

“You know,” he said after a long pause, “when I said _coming to bed_ , I wasn’t actually talking about the physical relocation.”

“Metonymy,” Rush said absently.

“What?”

“You said _coming to bed_ , but you meant _going to sleep_. It’s an example of metonymy. Using one aspect of an action to stand in for the action itself.”

“Right,” Young said, rolling his eyes. “Thanks. So how about it?”

“How about what?” Rush frowned at the computer.

“ _Rush_ ,” Young said warningly.

“Yes, yes. When I’m finished.”

Young resisted the urge to punch his pillow. Instead, he reached over and dimmed the light. The darkness in the room was thinned by the faint glow from Rush’s laptop. For a while Young lay staring up at the ceiling, ignoring it. Eventually he turned his head to watch Rush, who was half in shadow. His glasses caught the reflection of the screen, sending ghostly lines of code scrolling across his face. There was something eerie about the image that Young didn’t like. He wanted Rush to act human; he wanted Rush to _be human_ ; he wanted Rush to just— go to sleep. _Go to sleep_ , he willed. But if Rush caught the thought, he didn’t show it.

Finally Young said, faux-casually, “Your back is killing me, you know. You’re always hunched over that goddamn computer. Do you mind if I… ?”

“Mm,” Rush said, maybe not really listening.

Young sat up. He reached over and touched Rush’s shoulder tentatively. Rush’s eyes flicked to him, questioning, but he let himself be shifted sideways so that Young could get both hands on his back. Young dug the base of his palms into the broad tense muscles along Rush’s backbone, smoothing them out in slow sweeps and pausing to prod some of the smaller knots loose.

“Mm,” Rush said again, but different this time: vaguely contented and drowsy. His typing had paused.

Young worked his way up to the warm skin of Rush’s neck, where Rush was always trying to fight a cramp that wouldn’t release him. He found that spot and let his hand rest against it, not pressing, just letting the tender muscle warm under his touch.

“That’s,” Rush said, not very coherently.

“Hmm?” Young didn’t shift his hand. Cautiously, he projected a thread of exhaustion at Rush, an experience of weariness, a sense that it couldn’t hurt to give in and sleep. It was just a suggestion, nothing overt. It wasn’t meant to overwhelm Rush’s defenses.

Rush’s eyes drifted closed and Young could feel him make the abrupt transition to sleep. A moment later he jerked awake, startled, as his head nodded. //?//

“Easy,” Young said softly. “You fell asleep.”

“Did I?” Rush murmured, confused.

Young kept stroking his thumb against the same half-inch of Rush’s shoulder. “Mm-hm.”

He reached out one-handed and slid the computer off of Rush’s lap, settling it on the floor. Rush didn’t protest. Young exerted a very light pressure against him, drawing him down onto the bed. Rush curled almost automatically back against Young’s body, letting Young drape an arm over him. Young slid his glasses off, and reached back to lay them on the nightstand. Rush was mostly asleep again, and didn’t notice, though: “ _Duenos est_ ,” he mumbled blurrily a little while later.

“Yeah,” Young whispered, closing his eyes. “Whatever you say.”

* * *

_Young is hanging out at the C entrance to the Mountain, leaning back against the wall and watching the clouds drift by overhead— big white Western clouds with very flat bases, so heavy-looking that it seems like the mountaintops might puncture them. He’s just gotten back from some planet with no real weather patterns, just a weird kind of permanent chemical smog from some weapon that the Goa’uld tested ages ago. His team’d all had to wear gas masks, which was no picnic. He’s glad to be back on Earth, and he’s waiting for Sheppard, who’s never glad to be back on Earth. Sheppard was supposed to be off shift ten minutes ago. With Young’s luck, he’s on the phone with McKay, and if Young’s luck is really feeling its oats, he’ll end up hopping a plane out to Nevada because McKay, like, can’t function without Sheppard. Not that Young is jealous of McKay, because that would be— and it’s not like McKay and Sheppard are— and, anyway, Young wouldn’t be the first guy who went through a hard time at home and got a little bit weird, a little bit needy. Hell, Sheppard probably knows; he’s divorced. He and Young talked about it a while back, when Emily first kicked Young out of the house, and Sheppard said, “You feel like you’re supposed to grow into something, like your dad’s old suit, and then at some point you look down and you’re like, ‘Fuck, I’m the wrong shape.’And you don’t know what to do about it, so you keep, like, tugging and adjusting and getting it tailored, trying to make it look like it’s going to fit, trying to hide the parts of you that’re just… not made for suit-wearing. But there comes a time when you’ve just got to say, ‘I’m not going to wear the goddamn suit.’” Young hadn’t asked what happened when you took the suit off, but maybe that was why people got needy—that was the needy, naked part._

_So, anyway, he’s waiting for Sheppard, scuffing at some weedy little wildflowers with the toe of his boot, when the phone in the phone booth starts ringing, and was there always a phone booth there? Isn’t that a security risk? But Young knows that the call’s for him, so he goes ahead and takes it, picking up the receiver and saying, “Hello?”_

_“Can you come pick me up?” Rush says without preamble._

_Young rolls his eyes. “Hello to you too.”_

_“Yes, yes. But can you come pick me up?”_

_“I thought we weren’t doing this anymore. The whole me giving you rides thing. You just up and vanished one day.”_

_“Did I?” Rush sounds confused._

_“Didn’t you?” Young asks. Now he feels uncertain. When was the last time he talked to Rush? Why doesn’t Rush have a car? Does he even actually know Rush? He frowns, trying to clear his head._

_“Could you still—“ Rush’s breath hitches in something like panic. “It would be tremendously helpful if you could—“_

_“All right, I’ll be there in a sec,” Young says. It doesn’t occur to him ask where Rush is; he must already know, because in a minute he’s there, and it’s a little unclear where_ there _is, but it must be the right place, because Rush is climbing into the front seat of his car, and Rush is absolutely_ soaked _, like head-to-toe sodden, more like he’s been swimming with his clothes on than like he got caught in some kind of freak rainstorm._

_“Come on,” Young says. “Seriously? You couldn’t have warned me? I’ve have brought a towel.”_

_Rush looks down at the state of his clothes. He seems faintly surprised. “I’m sorry; I didn’t— I don’t know what—“ His eyes go vague and his mouth tenses, and something—_

_happens like black oil is bubbling up through the asphalt and the ground is shaking and the radio is giving out static blasts and snow is falling and the windows are breaking in rows of houses as the car passes them—_

_Young says, “I think maybe you better not think about it.”_

_Rush says unsteadily, “Yes.”_

_The world quietens. They keep driving. West, towards the mountains. This is Young’s favorite time of day, right before sunset, when everything has a crisp dark sharp outline. That doesn’t always happen at other times of day. Maybe that’s why he feels so confused so much of the time, why he messes up so much. The world would be easier if everything always had an outline like that._

_“Anyway,” he says to Rush after a while. “It’s no big deal, really. You just owe me some beer and a ribeye.”_

_Rush wrinkles his nose. “You’re charging me for the ride?”_

_“Why else would I keep picking your sorry ass up?” Young deadpans._

_Rush looks out the window, his mouth a tense line. “I’m sure I don’t know.”_

_“Rush. I was joking. That was a joke. I’m always going to come pick you up. All you have to do is call. You know that, right?”_

_The radio abruptly switches to scan, refusing to settle on a station. Young frowns at the stereo and smacks it. But it makes a buzzing, uneasy sound._

_Rush stares at it. “I don’t think I’m supposed to be here,” he whispers._

_“What are you talking about? I just told you. You’re always welcome.”_

_“Yes, but— I was trying not to— and something_ happened _.” Rush sounds panicked. In fact, he sounds like he’s having a panic attack, which is weird, because they’re sitting on the front porch of that cabin Young used to rent in Taos, and it’s pretty much the most relaxing place Young can imagine in the whole world. The whole universe, even. It’s dusk, and the air is sharp with the smell of piñon, and there’s snow on the mountains._

_Young puts his hand on Rush’s back. “Come on,” he says in a low, soothing voice. “Just breathe. Just keep breathing.”_

_Rush clenches his hands into fists. “I_ can’t _,” he says._

* * *

When Young woke, he was alone, which just figured. A brief search for Rush revealed that he was in Brody’s workshop, viciously critiquing Brody’s latest attempt at making paper and deriving a lot of satisfaction from the act.

There was a note on the nightstand, a page ripped out from one of those little notebooks:  _Nice trick. Too bad it will only work_ _once_. _N.R._

Young grinned.

At breakfast, he was cornered by Wray, who immediately put paid to his good mood.

“Colonel,” she said. “I just gave my weekly report to the IOA. They were hoping to send Colonel Carter and Dr. McKay through today to do an assessment on the feasibility of dialing Destiny from the alpha site.”

Young frowned. “Today?”

//Did you get that?// he sent to Rush, interrupting him in the midst of lecturing Brody on the resources required for medium- to large-scale paper manufacturing.

“I think it would be best not to put them off,” Wray said.

//I need at least seventy-two hours of warning if I’m going to have to lie to McKay,// Rush said, irritated at having his lengthy and carefully-constructed diatribe derailed.

//Come on.//

//Fine. I suppose we might as well get it over with.//

“Today works,” Young said to Wray. “Let’s say fourteen hundred hours?”

She nodded. “I assume Dr. Rush is aware of this as well?”

“He’s not happy about it,” Young said wryly, “but he’ll be there.”

Wray gave him an arch look. “Maybe there are some benefits to your arrangement after all.”

* * *

Young met up with Rush outside the communications room. Rush was wearing a sour expression.

"You could at least  _try_ to look like I didn't drag you here at gunpoint," Young suggested.

"It's the American military. The gun is always implied."

"Good to know you're going in with a positive attitude."

//Remind me,// Rush said, ignoring the comment. //What do they know? I haven’t been paying attention.//

Young sighed. //They know that you sat in the chair. I told them you and the AI were close, but I think they may suspect that there’s more going on. Last time I talked to Telford, he seemed close to figuring it out. No one on Earth knows about the two of us, and I'd like to keep it that way, so if you could—// He hesitated, searching for a diplomatic way to say it. //Maybe try to act—//

//What?// Rush snapped.

//Like you’re not certifiably insane?//

//Fuck off.//

//Rush. You know what I’m talking about. Don’t respond out loud to stuff I think at you. Don’t talk to the ship; don’t look at the AI if it’s hanging around.//

Rush shot him a look that managed to combine incredulity and wounded pride. //I don’t do any of those things.//

//You do all of those things. Especially when you’re upset or distracted.//

//Name one time.//

//You answer me out loud at least once a day. At _least._ //

Rush scowled at him and turned towards the door. //Yes, well. Let’s not waste any more time.//

The doors slid open without anyone hitting the controls, which was a _great_ omen, Young thought, in terms of Rush playing it cool. He rolled his eyes and followed Rush inside, where two people were waiting who were presumably _not_ actually Scott and James. Something in Scott’s posture, though, suggested that they also weren’t actually Carter and McKay.

“Can we get an ID, please?” Young asked.

“Samantha Carter,” James said.

“Jack O’Neill,” Scott said, tipping his chair back slightly. “Hey, Everett. Long time no see.”

Young saluted, which Rush absolutely _loved—_ the inside of his mind went scathing.

//I’m in the military,// Young pointed out. //It’s what we _do._ //

//He has no practical authority here.//

//We are _not_ having this conversation right now.//

“At ease,” O’Neill said. He looked very much at ease himself, for a man who’d decided to do an impromptu drop-in on a remote Ancient ship.

“I was under the impression,” Rush said, his voice taking on the smooth, polished quality that Young had come to recognize as his most dangerous tone, “that this meeting concerned an attempt to dial Destiny, and that therefore Dr. McKay would be present.”

//Settle down,// Young shot at him.

//I haven’t done anything. Yet.//

“Dr. Rush,” O’Neill said pleasantly. “Great to see you up and around. McKay couldn’t make it, but Carter can handle all the dialing stuff. Why don’t you two have a seat.”

Young tried not to look at Rush as they sat down on the opposite side of the table. He’d always felt like O’Neill could see through every move he made, which was maybe a pretty typical worry when it came to one’s senior officer, but a more legitimate worry with O’Neill than with most senior officers Young could name.

“I have the feeling,” O’Neill said, eyeing them, “that I’m not quite up to speed on what’s been happening around here. Especially what's been happening since you last reported back, after the SGC’s attempt to switch Colonel Telford and Dr. Rush.”

“Yes; thanks for that, by the way,” Rush snapped. “Remarkably well-conceived and executed. I enjoy being the victim of dubious ethical decisions; I really do.”

O’Neill’s eyes flicked to him and something in his face hardened. “Well, you’ve certainly begun to make a habit of it,” he said blandly.

Rush narrowed his eyes. Something in his affect tensed, like a cornered animal flattening its ears and getting ready to pounce. Young could sense from the tone of his weather that he was about to let loose with a storm.

He’d already started to push himself to his feet when Young laid a hand on his arm.

//Rush,// Young said, somewhere between request and remonstrance.

Rush froze, his eyes sliding over to Young. After a moment, he sank back into his chair. His thoughts were sullen, but he was making a concerted effort to calm down, and really, that was all that Young could ask.

O’Neill was watching them carefully. Young hastily tried to distract him by giving him an account of the ambush at the seed ship and the ensuing battle with the Nakai. He was afraid it wasn’t really working as well as he’d hoped for, and O’Neill’s subsequent change of topic made him sure.

“So,” O’Neill said, leaning back and stretching his legs out. “We’ve had some pretty interesting ideas floated about what, exactly, is going on with your ship. Any updates on that front that you'd like to share, Everett?”

Young hesitated. “I’m not sure what you’re referring to specifically, sir.”

O’Neill fixed him with a look of mild astonishment. “Last I heard, your theory was that the communication stones pulled you out because the AI was such good buddies with Rush. But Colonel Telford seems to have a different theory. He thinks that when Rush sat in the interface chair, it may have have put him in mental contact with the ship somehow.”

“Ah,” Young said with difficulty. “Yes. We, uh. We have recently discovered that.”

“Have you,” O’Neill said. “I thought you must have."

"The  _interface_ part turned out to be a little more— let's call it a little more  _thorough_ than expected."

"Really," O'Neill said. "How does _that_ work, then?” He was looking at Rush.

Rush said, “The ship connected itself to my mind. The interface facilitated alterations that allow my fundamentally biological system to translate Destiny's computational inputs into cognitive, i.e. sensory ones, allowing for an instantaneous, omnidirectional, and ongoing transfer of information."

“I have no idea what you just said,” O’Neill said, which Young suspected was probably untrue.

“ _S_ _ensory_ inputs?” Carter said with interest, leaning forward. “Can you give us an example of what you mean?”

“I can hear the shield harmonics.”

“Neat,” Carter said, flashing a winning smile. She was transparently trying to defuse Rush. “And can information be transferred the other way?”

Rush nodded.

“So you can effect systems changes just by thinking about them?”

“Yes.”

O’Neill raised his eyebrows.

Carter said, “Can you give us an example of _that_?”

Rush frowned at her mistrustfully for a moment. 

//Rush,// Young said.

//Yes, yes.//

Really Rush  _wanted_ to show off; there was a note of something childishly eager and almost boastful in his affect. But wariness was his default mode. At Young's prompting, he let a thin thread of himself unravel into the ship's darkness and snag against something that Young couldn't see, but could feel. The ship's intercom system crackled, and the faint sound of a piano began to come from it, joined after a beat by the slightly otherworldly keen of an oboe. 

Carter listened to it for a minute or two, seemingly entranced. "Nice," she said. "Is that Copeland?"

"Alwyn," Rush said expressionlessly.

"It sounds a little sentimental for your taste."

"I chose it for you." 

"I prefer Baroque," Carter said, her pleasantness not faltering. She gestured at the intercom. "Is this playing all over the ship?"

"Just here."

" _Really?_ " She looked sharply at him.

O'Neill gave her a questioning look. "Is that supposed to be impressive? Cause I was expecting a little more— you know— flash. Bang."

“I’m hardly going to drop the ship out of FTL for you," Rush said snidely.

“He's creating the music from _nothing_ ," Carter said. "And projecting it to one room, on a ship this size, which indicates a very fine level of control, and implies a high degree of integration between him and the ship.”

Rush eyed her a trifle suspiciously. “That’s correct,” he said after a pause.

“So that leaves me wondering," she said, turning her gaze back to him. "Can the ship affect _you?_ ”

“It hasn’t made a habit of doing so,” Rush said airily, raking his hair back.

Young barely managed to avoid a wince at the blatantness of the lie. As if the ship wasn’t _constantly_ affecting Rush, sometimes making him impossible for him to function. As if it hadn’t fucking biochemically _forced_ him to sit in the goddamn chair.

//Stop that,// Rush said irritably. //They’re going to ask you the same question, and you’d better be prepared to answer.//

“But would you be aware if it _were_ doing so?” Carter asked, as though she were just musing to herself.

“From my perspective,” Rush said coolly, “your concern is unverifiable. Therefore I can’t address it.”

“But Colonel Young presumably can,” Carter said, looking at Young.

“There’s been only one incident,” Young said.

//What are you doing? You’re supposed to say _no_ ,// Rush seethed.

//They’re going to hear about some of this eventually. We might as well try to control the story.//

//Easy for you to say. You’re not the one who’s going to look fucking—// He broke off for a moment, his thoughts in turmoil. //Insane,// he finished.

//Everybody already knows you’re insane.//

“Following Colonel Telford’s attempt to switch with Dr. Rush,” Young continued, “the ship shut down, and Rush became unresponsive. When power was restored to the ship, he regained consciousness. However, Destiny’s AI remained locked in the central interface of the ship, and the ship was able to force Rush to sit in the interface chair and recover it.”

“It was more like strong persuasion, really,” Rush said stiffly, staring at the table.

“It didn’t happen right away,” Young said. “It seemed to be triggered by proximity to the interface. When he came near it, he made an attempt to engage with it. When I restrained him, he became incoherent.”

//Could you tone it down a little?//

//I _am_ toning it down. You don’t remember this part, do you?//

//Not really.//

//Well, it was— not fun.//

Young said, “We attempted to sedate him, but ultimately we had to choose between letting him sit in the interface chair or forcibly restraining him.”

“Sounds inconvenient,” O’Neill observed.

“But it’s only happened the once. In response to a plan by Homeworld Command that completely disabled the ship.”

“I take your point.” O’Neill was looking at Young consideringly. “I think you and I should keep talking. Carter, you want to take Rush and go talk about these dialing plans?”

//?// Rush sent to Young.

//Maybe just check in with me if it seems like she’s getting pry-y. Although God knows you have a special gift for not giving information out.//

//Flattery will get you everywhere.//

A faint aura of smugness followed Rush as he escorted Carter out the door.

Young and O’Neill sized each other up in the moment that followed. The room should have seemed larger, but it seemed smaller instead.

“So,” O’Neill said at last. “It seems like you and Rush are getting along pretty well.”

Young shrugged. “It’s a work in progress.”

“I’d say it’s a little more than that,” O’Neill said. His tone was deceptively mild. “I had to sit through weekly briefings with the man for six months before he transferred to Icarus, and I don’t think I’ve _ever_ seen him put a lid on it like he did back there. And you didn’t even _say_ anything to him.”

Young tried to keep his face expressionless. “There aren’t a lot of people on the ship. We've all gotten to know each other pretty well.”

“Right,” O’Neill said. "Of course."

When Young didn’t respond to that, O’Neill sighed and sat forward, resting his hands on the table. “Look, Everett, we’ve got to talk. About Rush. About _Telford._ We can have this talk on the record or off it. I prefer the latter, since most of what concerns Rush is already off the record.And maybe then you’ll stop dancing around whatever it is you’re trying not to tell me. How’s that sound?”

“…Off the record it is, then,” Young said, his stomach dropping.

“Great. So it may interest you to know that Colonel Telford is currently engaging in a PR campaign against you. He’s met privately with several of the more prominent IOA members, arguing for your replacement.”

“Not to be blunt,” Young said levelly, “but why should I care?”

“You should care because if we successfully dial the Destiny, it’s very likely that we’ll be sending personnel. And you can guess who’s going to be first on the list.”

“There’s no grounds for him to replace me,” Young said, a hint of anger creeping into his tone despite his best efforts. “Last time I checked, I still outranked him.”

“Right,” O’Neill said. “But that’s not the case he’s making."

“What case _is_ he making?”

“He’s arguing that you’ve failed to take full advantage of the Destiny’s potential. That you lack the experience and vision necessary to explore the ship’s capabilities, and that you’re the reason what we’ve gotten out of the mission has been pretty limited in scope.”

“So send some scientists,” Young retorted. “Experience? Vision? What’s Telford going to do, give some inspirational speeches?”

“Telford’s track record on scientific missions is more extensive than his official resume might indicate. He had a scientific project before he was offered the command you turned down. One associated with Icarus, investigating the mechanics of ascension.”

They regarded each other in silence for a moment.

“Off the record,” Young said quietly, “I’ve recently become aware of that.”

O'Neill's eyebrows went up. "Rush _told_ you?"

“Yes.”

“So you understand why Telford has an actionable case for reboarding the Destiny, then.”

“What I don’t _understand_ ,” Young said tightly, “is how he hasn’t been labeled a _security_ risk and shipped off to McMurdo. At the least. At the _least._ ”

O’Neill spread his hands. “Give me some evidence of wrongdoing under his own power. I have no great love for the man. Daniel  _despises_ him. But somehow he always seems to—"

"Get away with it," Young said.

"I was going to say, Cover his ass."

Young hesitated for a moment. He wanted to make sure that Rush wouldn't hear what he was about to say, less because he thought there was anything Rush could do to stop him, not even because he was afraid that Rush would be angry with him, but more because— he just— for some reason, he didn't like the idea that Rush might hear. “Rush has something on him,” he said.

“Why does _that_ not surprise me. What kind of something are we talking about?”

“Attempted murder.”

O’Neill stared at him. “ _What?_ I was thinking along the lines of _tax evasion_ , or—“ He broke off abruptly.

Young watched as he put the pieces together.

“When did this happen?” O’Neill asked. Young could tell that he already knew the answer.

“On an offworld base belonging to Anubis,” Young said. “While using a piece of equipment meant to change the electrophysiology of Rush's brain.”

“God damn it,” O’Neill said quietly, pushing himself out of his chair and pacing over to the far wall. “Daniel always suspected that something truly fucked-up had happened on that planet."

"Yeah, well," Young said. "It did."

O’Neill shook his head. “There’s nothing I can do with that. Officially, Telford was brainwashed. If Rush had just _told_ us, we might have at least detected the brainwashing before the whole Icarus project was hopelessly compromised. It’s not like he'd have no evidence; we’ve got a Tok’ra device that allows cognitive testimony. What the hell is wrong with him, anyway?”

Young stared at his hands. "It was— a complicated situation, sir."

“Isn't it always?” O’Neill sighed, gripping the back of his chair. “I’m going to lay it out for you. If Homeworld Command successfully dials in to Destiny, they're going to send Telford. There's nothing I can do about it. ”

" _If_ they dial in," Young said.

"They're gonna try."

“—Pending the results of this feasibility assessment,” Young said, getting slowly to his feet.

His eyes met O'Neill's.

“Correct,” O’Neill said.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Young said, “I think I have something to attend to.”

“You’re walking a pretty fine line, you know,” O’Neill said. “Off the record. But— off the record— I tend to find those are the only kinds of lines that lead anywhere interesting.”

Young said, “Permission to—“

O’Neill waved his hand. “Yeah, yeah. Get on out of here.”

* * *

//Rush,// Young said, heading towards the gateroom.

//Try conversing with yourself for a change. I’m otherwise occupied.//

Rush and Carter were staring up into the dark and glassy space of an open access panel.

“—Yes, I understand what you mean,” Carter was saying. “That’s phenomenal. You can clearly see the evolution towards zero point module technology at play— it’s not all the way there, but they mostly had it.”

//I'm coming to get you,// Young said. //We've got to talk.//

// _Get_ me? You're coming to  _get_ me? No.  _You_ do not ' _get' me_.//

Young fought off the urge to sigh. //I'm respectfully requesting that you relocate your in-demand and very, very labor-intensive ass outside the gateroom for a minute, then, okay?//

//No. It is not okay.//

// _Rush._ //

// _Fine._ //

“I agree,” Rush said to Carter, not letting his seething mental frustration show. “As you can see, the platform isn’t entirely crystal-based— it’s more of a hybrid, bridging the older system, based on a naquadah alloy, with the more sophisticated crystal-based control interfaces of later Ancient technology.”

“The entire architecture of the dialing hardware is different as well, isn’t it?” Carter asked. “It doesn’t look familiar to me.”

“That’s correct,” Rush said with a quick smile. “Very astute, Dr. Carter.” There was a surprising current of warmth in his thoughts, a genuine appreciation that Young had rarely sensed before. For some reason it drove Young towards a surge of irritation.

//Rush. Can the phony charm and get out here.//

//What can I say,// Rush said, with a faint, inexplicable hint of satisfaction. //I appreciate a well-tailored uniform.//

Another spike of irritation shot through Young. //What happened to the implied gun of the American military?//

//I also appreciate the aesthetics of a well-constructed gun.//

Young shut his eyes, a breath huffing out of him in annoyance.

“Well, I’ve looked at more DHDs in my day than you could shake a stick at,” Carter said to Rush amiably. “And call me Sam.”

“Nick,” Rush said, not looking at her.

// _Nick?_ // Young said. //You just met her, and _she_ gets to call you _Nick?_ //

//Are you _jealous?_ // Now Rush’s thoughts just felt smug.

//No,// Young said defensively, stopping outside the gate room doors. //Just get out here, all right?//

“Excuse me for a moment,” Rush said to Carter, stepping backward. “I'll be back shortly; I have to check in with one of my subordinates. He's simply incapable of functioning without supervision. You know how it is."

//Thanks for that,// Young seethed.

Rush shot a baleful look at him as he cleared the doors of the gateroom. //Why are you here? I thought we were trying to appear as the paragons of sanity we are./

“You need to find a reason to stall their attempt to dial in.”

Rush stared at him, picking up on the seriousness of his thoughts. “Why?”

“When they dial in, Telford is coming on board.”

Rush’s thoughts abruptly dropped into Ancient. He was shoving all of his emotions as far down as possible, compressing them under something that felt like lead, so that Young couldn’t get the slightest hint of them. “He’s replacing you?”

“No. He’d be continuing the project he had before Icarus. The one without a name.”

Rush eyes flicked away. "It did have a name, though, really. Didn't it. According to him."

Young didn't know what to say to that.

After a moment, Rush shrugged. “Well. At any rate, I'm afraid he'll be terribly bored. That project has, essentially, been completed." A dark hint of amusement colored his thoughts.

Young sighed. “Would you take this seriously, please?”

“I _am_ taking it seriously,” Rush said, though his posture had shifted into a kind of indifferent bravado that didn't inspire trust. “You want a technical problem with their feasibility assessment? How about _no one gates onto Destiny without the express permission of Dr. Nicholas fucking Rush._ Will that work?”

Young resisted the urge to tear at his hair. “How am I supposed to explain that? We’re not exactly in a position to be making enemies of Homeworld Command!”

“You need to settle down,” Rush said.

Young stared at him.

“Oh, what?” Rush said dismissively. “I’m capable of being reasonable. What’s your main objection to Telford coming on board?”

“The man tried to _murder_ you!”

“It’s not as though he didn’t have a reason,” Rush said, pathologically calm. “He probably won’t do it again.”

“ _Probably_? I don’t want him anywhere near you!”

Rush looked at him inscrutably. “Interesting. That’s your main objection? I would have gone for his dubious loyalties to Stargate Command, and his long history with the Lucian Alliance, but—“

“Stop pretending it doesn’t matter to you,” Young said heavily.

Rush glanced away. “We need a supply line.”

“We can get by without it.”

“Not for long. It’s getting progressively more difficult to drop out of FTL without running into someone who wants to destroy or board us. Plus, we’re running out of ammunition.”

“Okay, but let’s at least try to manage on our own before Telford comes on board and starts—" Young didn't finish his sentence. "Starts doing whatever it is he's going to do," he said after a pause. "Find a reason to delay their dial-in attempt. For now.”

Rush wasn't looking at him. “Is that an _order_ , colonel?”

Young sighed. “No. It’s a suggestion.”

There was a short silence.

Rush said abruptly, still staring at the deck, “Consider it done.”

He turned, trailing strange ghosts of half-strangled emotions that Young couldn’t see well enough to follow to their source. The doors to the gate room opened for him, as all the doors on the ship now opened for him, and he walked through, leaving Young alone on the other side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Alwyn's Oboe Sonata](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VNmmQ9GBl8)


	21. The Axiom of Choice

Chloe is cold.

She gets cold easily now. She doesn’t know if it’s because of the— transformation. The Transformation. She doesn’t know how to think of it, still. She feels like it should have a title. But there isn’t a title for it. What They Did To Me. She doesn’t want to be a _me_ who’s been _done to_. She doesn’t want to be in the accusative or dative case. If she transformed, then at least her body was— doing. Acting. Flowering: a strange flower, and poisonous, for the most part, but with roots she could repurpose when the rest of it had been ripped away.

She doesn’t know how deep those roots go, or where they’ve spread to. Her brain works differently now. It’s not just that she _knows_ things, like a dozen textbooks were uploaded into her body. Probably Matt imagines it like that, and she doesn’t tell him any different. But she wouldn’t be any good at math if it had been that kind of change. Math isn’t just having the right tools to solve problems. It’s a question of angles. It’s knowing how to look at the problem, and being able to sort of _rotate_ it at the right speed.

So she looks at things from different angles now. And much faster than she used to.

But if her brain is that different, then why not other things? Why not temperature? Or temperament, for that matter? WhyWhy not who she loves, what she laughs at, the colors she likes? What if everything has changed, but too slowly for her notice? Her mother, she knows, would nod if she said that and sink into an armchair and cry very pointedly and dab a Kleenex at her eyes and say, _Chloe, you’ve changed!_ And Chloe would have to leave the room because she’d feel the panic-monster descending, the black thing that sometimes sits half-on/half-inside her chest, and it wouldn’t be fair to put Xanax in someone else’s body, even though she still keeps a bottle upstairs in her old room.

She’s changed. Has she changed? If she’s changed, who changed her? Has she changed too much? More than she was supposed to change? Is there a Chloe out there she was supposed to look like? It would be nice to have something to measure herself against. It would help when she wakes up in the very very dark parts of the mornings (though that’s silly, actually, because all times of day are the same darkness on the ship) terrified that she’s not herself any longer.

That’s why Matt’s really good. Because he wakes up when she wakes up and he says _Shh, it’s okay, you’re okay, it’s fine, you’re Chloe,_ and he doesn’t think so hard about what it means to be Chloe. She’s Chloe. And that’s enough for him.

Matt is also good because he’s very warm to wake up next to. And she’s especially cold lately, because it’s been a long time since they’ve flown through a star. And when they haven’t flown through a star in a while, Destiny tends to make life difficult by rationing power. So everything gets cold. And it seems colder on nights like tonight, when she can’t sleep and she can’t stay in her restless quarters, so she tiptoes down to the Math Room to work for a while.

She calls it the Math Room even though this makes Dr. Rush huff, but it’s actually just a conference room that they moved into when she told him he couldn’t keep writing all over corridors because it gave people the wrong impression of him. _I’m fairly certain it gives them an accurate impression of me_ , he’d countered. _Namely, that I’m the type of person who writes all over corridors._ But Chloe had rolled her eyes and said, _Well, I’d like to be able to sit down, as in not on the floor. Sorry if I, like, missed the memo where it said mathematicians have to abjure all the comforts of the material world._ He’d given her a crooked half-smile and said, _You’re a peculiar person, Miss Armstrong_. So they had moved into the conference room, and written all over its walls instead.

And no one else comes in here. Just them. Not Eli. Not that she doesn’t like Eli; she does, but sometimes she feels like when he’s around he gets all of Dr. Rush’s attention, just because he’s very… exclamatory. Everyone’s always talking about how he’s the smartest person they know, but secretly Chloe wonders if he’s just very very good at being a smart person. It’s easy to understand what he’s talking about. He’s really fun to know. No one is ever going to say those things about Dr. Rush. Or, probably, about her.

So, anyway, she feels safe in the Math Room, because no one else is going to show up there. That’s why she goes there when she can’t sleep. Tonight she’s working on the Banach-Tarski paradox, which doesn’t really interest Dr. Rush that much, even though it has to do with two things that he likes, infinite sets and fundamental contradictions. He doesn’t like the Banach-Tarski paradox because it’s on the geometry side of set theory, and he struggles with thinking spatially about problems, which seems like a strange weak spot for a mathematician to have. Mostly instead of the paradox itself, Chloe’s gotten distracted by the axiom of choice (which _does_ interest Dr. Rush) and thinking about negations of the axiom of choice, and different models of ZFC, and so on, down the rabbithole. So when Dr. Rush shows up, she smiles at him, assuming that they’ll end up talking about her work.

But instead he sits on the edge of the table, looking hesitant. “I wasn’t certain you’d be down here,” he says.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Chloe says.

“Mm. I’m familiar with the problem.”

“Matt had a night shift, and—“ She shrugs, looking down. “It’s harder sometimes, without him. Math helps.”

“Yes,” Dr. Rush says. “It does, doesn’t it. Odd, how that is.” He pushes his hair behind his ears, staring into space. “Chloe,” he says at last. “I have a question for you.”

“All right?” she says, when he doesn’t immediately continue.

“Really I want to ask for your help. You mustn’t think of this as something you can’t say no to. In fact, possibly you _should_ say no to it. I don’t wish to require you to keep any secrets, particularly if you feel that doing so might complicate your relationship with Lieutenant Scott. But at the same time, you’re quite—“ He pauses. Finally, he says, “You understand that a person might wish to keep secrets for reasons that have nothing to do with those that might be attributed to them.

Chloe looks at him for a long time. “You want me to not tell Colonel Young something,” she translates. “But not because you have an ulterior motive.”

He smiles faintly. “I always have an ulterior motive,” he murmurs. “You should know that by now.”

“Then— because you think that he wouldn’t understand why you’re doing what you’re doing.”

“Correct,” he whispers.

He seems sad.

 _I think you should tell him_ , Chloe wants to say. _If it makes you sad not to._ But at the same time she knows what it’s like to know that someone won’t understand. Even if you wish they would. Even if you wish sometimes that you could change them so that they’d be someone who could understand. Because you wish that, but at the same time you don’t really wish that, because then they might not _be_ the person you wish would understand anymore. Because then they might be someone different. Because then they might be— transformed.

“Sometimes,” she says, not really answering his not-quite-request, “I feel like it’s gotten harder for me to know the right thing to do. Like when I have to make a decision. Everything used to be simpler. And I wonder if that makes me bad. If it makes me a bad person.”

“Chloe,” Dr. Rush says, distressed. “No.”

“Because it feels like I’m— _corrupted_ somehow.”

She sees him flinch.

“But I don’t _think_ I am?” She can’t help making it into a question. “I think it’s just hard. It’s really hard. And it seems like it gets harder the more dimensions you see things in. Metaphorical dimensions, not—“

“No,” he says. “I know.” He takes his glasses off and rubs a hand across his face. “I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive,” he says, sounding incredibly tired. “That it’s hard, and— that someone might be a bad person. For whatever value of bad you consider—“ he makes an _and-so-on_ gesture.

“But you’re not,” Chloe says. Now she’s distressed. “I don’t think you are. If I did, I wouldn’t do— whatever it is you’re asking.”

“But you’re going to?”

She nods her head determinedly. She’s made her decision. “Yes.”

He should look happy. But he doesn’t. He looks kind of weirdly… agonized. “I should have asked Eli,” he murmurs.

It hurts. Chloe feels her mouth wobble. But she lifts her chin up defiantly and asks, “Why didn’t you?”

“I—“ Dr. Rush starts, and then breaks off. He shakes his head, and she gets the sense that he was going to say something that wasn’t true, or that wasn’t completely true, or that maybe he didn’t realize until right exactly this moment wasn’t true. “Many reasons,” he says, “not the least of which is that I suppose… I wanted to be understood.”

“I’m familiar with the problem,” Chloe says.

They look at each other.

“It _is_ something, though, that you’ll find exciting,” Dr. Rush says with a wan smile. “It’s something that you’re perhaps uniquely equipped to appreciate.”

Chloe knows what this means. “Geometry?”

“Of a sort. You’re familiar with the material in the database regarding Destiny’s mission?”

She frowns. “You mean— all that stuff about looking for the edge of the universe? I thought that must have been some kind of colloquialism. The Ancients couldn’t have believed in a spatially finite universe. It would have messed up all sorts of calculations.”

“Yes,” Dr. Rush says, making an exasperated face. “One would think that Volker, who’s an astrophysicist, for God’s sake, would have raised a few more questions about this.”

“I’m sure he thought it was a colloquialism, too,” Chloe says loyally. The science team has to stick together.

Dr. Rush doesn’t look convinced. “I believe,” he says, drumming his fingers restlessly against the table, “that when the Ancients spoke of the universe’s edge, they weren’t referring to edges of perceptible spacetime, but rather to points at which d-branes of the multiverse collide. That is what they intended Destiny to detect.”

Chloe tilts her head. There’s a familiar sensation as something alien shivers through her. _They_ ( _the Nakai_ , a voice whispers to her; _say it_ ) don’t have the same concepts; don’t use human geometries; and it takes a moment for her to access her own neural pathways and approximate their knowledge with human ideas about strings. There’s about a second or two of an unsettling fugue state, when she blinks, and Dr. Rush has shifted position, and the entirety of tachyon condensation is suddenly sitting inside her brain. She doesn’t like that feeling. It’s like something living inside her has briefly taken her over and then withdrawn to whatever place it normally lurks.

Dr. Rush is watching her closely. “Do they know anything?”

He calls them _they_ too. At least when he’s talking to Chloe.

“I don’t think so,” she says. “They don’t— _like_ the idea of manifolds. Their cosmology is underdeveloped.”

“Ah, well.”

A terrible thought strikes her, and she gulps a half-breath. “Is that— is that the real reason? Did you ask me so I’d—”

“No,” he says quickly. “No. I would have told you.”

She isn’t quite sure if she believes him or not. He isn’t straightforward. You have to know that about him if you’re going to try to be his friend. You have to accept that he’ll try to move you around, more like a chess piece than a person. He doesn’t even mean to do it sometimes. It’s just an instinct. When she catches him doing it, she feels sad.

“I promise,” he says, looking at her in a way that’s hard and soft and stern and begging. She didn’t know before she met Dr. Rush that a person could put so many things into one look.

“Pinky swear?” she asks, just to see his expression.

He wrinkles his nose. “I’d threaten to take it to Eli after all, but I suppose he’d probably be worse.”

Chloe shrugs. Then, still catching up, and not one hundred percent sure she shouldn’t be wary, she asks, “Why are we looking for collision points, anyway? What’s supposed to happen when d-branes collide?”

Dr. Rush raises his eyebrows. “I suppose we’ll find out.”

Chloe looks at him dubiously. “I can’t tell whether you really don’t know, or if you’re just being all kindergarten teacher-y.”

That startles a laugh out of him. “No one,” he says, “has _ever_ accused me of resembling a kindergarten teacher.”

“No,” Chloe says reflectively. “Actually, now that I think about it, it’s kind of horrifying.”

Dr. Rush slides a laptop across the table to her. “I’ve prepared some material for you to familiarize yourself with,” he says. “We can talk more later.”

Chloe watches him turn to go. “I don’t understand why it’s a secret,” she says a little hesitantly. “I mean— shouldn’t the whole science team be working on this?”

Dr. Rush pauses. “Let’s keep it between the two of us for now,” he says.

“Because?”

“Yes, because.”

And there’s that chess-piece feeling.

He starts to leave, and gets as far as opening the door.

“You’re not limping,” Chloe says quietly.

He’s not. He’s not using a crutch or anything. He goes still all over, so she knows she’s said something that she wasn’t supposed to say.

“No,” he says without turning to face her.

There’s a long pause.

She doesn’t want him to leave. She has a bad feeling. She’s scared, and she doesn’t know why. This happens to her a lot. It’s parts of her brain putting together pieces at a subrational level. That’s what Dr. Rush says. There’s a kind of lag between her conscious and unconscious minds. She gets sensory input, and it takes her a little while to work through it. Sometimes she knows an answer before she knows what the question is. Like, see: he’s not shivering, and he should be shivering, because it’s cold, and he’s not even wearing a coat. That’s the question, and the answer is that she has a bad feeling about it.

“You could stay,” she blurts out. “I wouldn’t tell anybody. If you wanted to stay and work here all night. If you can’t sleep. I’m— working on the Banach-Tarski paradox, and we could talk about the axiom of choice. You could yell at me about uncountable sets.”

“As tempting an offer as that is,” Dr. Rush says. “I have— oh, places to go, consoles to talk to.”

“All right,” Chloe says miserably.

“Perhaps another time,” he whispers. He’s still not looking at her. After a moment, he vanishes around the edge of the door.

Chloe sits alone in the Math Room with the Banach-Tarski paradox. She wishes that Matt weren’t on duty. She would really like to curl up next to him. Around three AM the ship can get so unearthly. The white writing on the walls looks like a ghost put it there. Some of the writing is hers. Does that make her the ghost? She has a sudden impulse to erase it all: the five-foot-square block on zeta functions, her work on Riemannian manifolds, the Yang-Mills corner that Dr. Rush keeps telling her is technically off-limits because she hasn’t done quantum mechanics yet. Just erase it and run back home and hide under the covers till Matt finds her and she can ask him who Chloe is. Who’s Chloe, Matt? Does Chloe keep secrets? Does Chloe do the right thing? Does Chloe know what the right thing is? Can you teach her?

No. She doesn’t think there is a right thing. There’s just—

She knows what Dr. Rush would say. _Trying_. But the idea of it makes her so tired and so scared. Like _changing_. An iterated function for which you don’t know the endpoint, another iteration always required. How hard do you have to try? When are you done changing? How can you ever know from the inside? The point can’t see the graph that it’s part of.

So maybe that’s why she’s doing this. Because she thinks— she thinks that Dr. Rush is trying. And she wants to believe that it might be enough. That it might be okay to—

Move. To keep moving. Even if you’re not always sure what you’re moving towards.

She’s moving now, in a much more prosaic way. She’s packing up her stuff, putting Dr. Rush’s laptop in her shoulder bag, turning out the lights in the Math Room and heading home. When she gets there, she’ll brush her hair and braid it so it won’t get tangled. She’ll take off her shirt and put her camisole on. She’ll brush her teeth and clean off the traces of her carefully rationed makeup, and she’ll think the same rueful thought that she always thinks: if the Lucian Alliance was going to dial Destiny, couldn’t they have stopped at Sephora first? And just like always, when she thinks that thought, it’ll make her laugh. And she’ll feel like just a girl for about five minutes, because she is. She is just a girl. Then she’ll sit cross-legged on the bed and hug Matt’s pillow to her chest, because it always smells a little like him, and she’ll open the laptop and she’ll read about d-brane collisions. And eventually Matt will come back. And he’ll take off his uniform and lie down and tug her against him, and she’ll say, _Mmm, you’re so warm_ , and he’ll say, _No, you’re so cold_ , and she’ll shiver and she’ll stare out at the darkness, and she’ll press her face into his shoulder and say, _I know._


	22. Chapter 22

Technically speaking, one day on a spaceship was pretty much as cold and dark as another. After all, you were in _space_. Once in a while Destiny flew through a star, and that broke up the monotony of no weather; the crew had taken to gathering on the observation deck on those occasions when they could, soaking up the light in what felt like an impromptu solstice celebration, a seasonal shift in their strange, irregular year. But mostly there was just the faint blur of FTL starlight, and an awareness of the big, cold, dark void around them.

This had been a cold, dark couple of days on Destiny even by those standards. After almost a month, the power sources that Rush had activated when he first connected with the ship had just about run down. Lesser-used compartments were sealing themselves off. The ambient temperature on the ship had dropped by almost seven degrees. At night it got colder. The lights had dimmed. It was like they were living in a constant oh three hundred hours.

They needed to find a star.

That, of course, was a problem. The Nakai were still tracking them, and for a refueling attempt to have even a chance of success, they were going to have to deviate from their current course, find a star without any orbiting planets that might contain obelisks or gates, and drop out of FTL long enough to pass through it.

Young was pacing the halls, trying to think through the problem. He looked up as the lights dimmed by another percent, and resisted the urge to feel personally defeated.

Maybe he was just out of practice at _real_ defeat. They’d had a week and a half of downtime, which was almost unheard-of. No attacks, no disasters, no alien life-forms, no mutinies… even Rush had been suspiciously well-behaved. Well— well-behaved for Rush. He’d tried to force Eli to pull a forty-eight hour shift at one point, had sabotaged his own radio to avoid answering it, and might or might not have made Volker cry. (Park, who’d spilled the beans to Young, said that Volker had claimed it was a cold, but that he’d definitely at the very least been sniffling.) Young was also pretty sure Rush hadn’t been sleeping quite as much as he wanted Young to think he’d been.

Whatever sleeping was happening was still happening in Young’s quarters, and they hadn’t really talked about it. Rush just showed up every night at about the same time, or else they ended up wandering back there together, and Young stripped off his uniform and got into bed while Rush curled on the other side, working on his laptop. Young tried to stay awake as long as he could, but it wasn’t always a winning battle. He was worn out, and anyway, Rush tended to glance at him, an amused tilt to his mouth, and say, “So suspicious,” picking up on the cast of his thoughts. There’d been one night when Rush had reached out, seemingly unaware that he was doing it, and rested his hand in the curls of Young’s hair, smoothing them absently, and Young had let his eyes drift closed, and then the awful thought had occurred to him that this was very like what he’d done to Rush, trying to make him sleep— and he’d shot awake, but Rush had been absorbed in his computer. _So suspicious_ , Young had told himself.

He always woke alone, so he figured Rush was getting up at about five in the morning and sneaking off to do whatever it was he did. That wasn’t a _lot_ of sleep, but Young would take what he could get. It felt like—

Well, if not winning, then at least like compromise. By comparison, the loss of power was definitely defeat.

He was still dwelling on the slow dimming of the lights when he got close to the control interface room, where his thoughts were interrupted by the sudden appearance of Eli, who was looking uncharacteristically stormy. He was hugging his laptop to his chest.

“Look,” he said, not even bothering with a preamble. “We’ve got to talk, _yet again_ , about your better half in there.”

Young sighed. “Eli—“

“Wait. What am I even saying? Clearly _you’re_ the better half.”

“I take it the search for a candidate star isn’t going well?”

“No, it’s going fine. It’s going awesome. We’ve got a really good prospect, actually, and things are getting fancy in terms of options for avoiding enemy ships. I think we’ll be ready for a tactical briefing in a couple of hours? I don’t know; check with Captain Insanity in there.”

“Eli,” Young said reproachfully. “He’s no _captain.”_

That startled a laugh out of Eli. “Okay, fair point. Look, he thinks I’m doing astrometric calculations right now, so let’s get out of the hallway. I’ve got to run something by you.”

//I knew he was going to go straight to you,// Rush commented.

//Why’d you let him leave, then?//

“Oh, crap,” Eli said resignedly. “You’ve got that look on your face.”

“What look?”

“That look like you’re talking to him. Did you just _rat me out?_ ”

The door to the CI room hissed open. Park, Volker, and Brody filed out, looked various degrees of disconsolate.

“He says you might as well come back in,” Volker said. “He also said you’re taking my night shift.

“Oh, for the love of—“ Eli turned, clenching his fists.

He and Young headed into the room. Rush was there in his usual pose of casual grandeur, managing to look like some kind of science emperor sprawled in his throne in spite of the fact that he was dressed in his oversized jacket and his hair was disheveled. He had his feet propped up on a console, and was working on his laptop. He didn’t look remotely affected by the dark or the cold.

“I am _not_ taking another night shift,” Eli declared. “Do you know how many I’ve pulled in the last week?”

“Spare me,” Rush said without looking up. “You get more sleep than the average graduate student.”

“Yeah, which is a lifestyle I purposefully chose to avoid!”

//Is there a reason you’re working him up like this?// Young asked wearily.

//I get tired of people talking about me.//

//That’s all we do, you know. As soon as you’re not around, non-stop, 24/7…//

Rush shot Young a poisonous look.

Young massaged his temples with one hand. “Eli,” he said, trying to keep his voice even, “do you want to tell me what’s on your mind?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Eli said. He glared at Rush. “So seeing how the ship drops down to like fifty freaking degrees at night—“

“Centigrade,” Rush snapped. “Can we _please_ standardize to the metric system? Volker gets confused enough without adding more than one set of units into the mix.”

“Okay, first of all, Volker is not that bad.” Eli said. “Also— we all know exactly what you’re doing. So just cut it out already, okay?”

“Fine,” Rush said tightly. “By all means. Continue to astonish us.”

“Thanks for your unnecessary _permission_. I _will_.” Eli crossed his arms. “So the ship gets down to like fifty degrees _Fahrenheit_ at night, and I’m always in here at night, since _someone_ keeps assigning me night shifts, and _Rush_ is always hanging out here at like two in the morning—“

Rush stared fixedly at his computer, not meeting Young’s accusatory stare.

“—And then I started to notice that he never seems to get _cold_. I mean—“ Eli gestured. “Look at the guy. He weighs like ninety pounds. He should be freezing. He should have, like, pneumonia or something by now.”

“A scientifically unsound presumption,” Rush said, hooking one arm over his shoulder.

Young tried to control his temper. “As interested, albeit totally unsurprised—“ he threw another icy, furious look at Rush— “as I am to find out that he’s been in here at two in the morning, I don’t get what’s upsetting you.”

“What’s—“ Eli threw his hands up in frustration. “Okay, so at first I thought it might be the genetic changes. But Ancients actually preferred warmer ambient temperatures than us. Then I thought maybe the ship was just warming up his local environment, because it does that, right? Because it’s a loser who plays favorites. But that’s not it. And probably I wouldn’t even have figured it out if we’d been at our baseline power levels, because it would have been pretty much impossible to detect. But—“

Rush’s weather had gone extremely foreboding. He was staring at the far wall.

“—He’s pulling energy from the ship,” Eli said.

No one said anything.

“Um, excuse me?” Eli said, opening his hands. “He’s pulling energy from the ship? Like, to _be a human_ , or— you know— whatever he is?"

“Not strictly true,” Rush said quietly. “As I explained.”

“Yeah, if by _explained_ , you mean, said _Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about it, Eli_ ,” he repeated, affecting a snotty impression of Rush. “Like I’m an idiot or something. Like I’d just go, _Oh, sure thing, Dr. Rush, sir!_ and not get what this actually _means_.”

“Okay, settle down,” Young said, holding a hand up. He, unlike Eli, _was_ apparently an idiot, because it wasn’t immediately apparent to him what Eli meant. But he could tell that beneath Eli’s aggravation was a real sense of unease. And Rush still wasn’t looking at him. He was thinking mostly in Ancient, a sure sign of agitation. When he felt Young brush against his thoughts, his mind went flat and blank.

“How much energy are we talking about?” Young asked finally.

Eli shrugged. “In the grand scheme of things, not a lot. As more and more systems shut down, the amount he’s pulling is becoming a larger percent of what’s available. It’s not going to affect our tactical plans or anything, but, you know, it’s noticeable.”

Young took a seat and considered Rush, who was refusing to acknowledge his presence. He was pretty sure that if Rush had been pulling energy from the ship, he would have _felt_ it. Rush would have started going to pieces, at least a little bit; Young would have had to be untangling him constantly. But in fact Rush hadn’t had any problems since the night of the party. That alone should have raised a red flag.

“He’s not pulling it _from_ Destiny,” he said slowly, trying to put into words something that he’d been sensing with the very outer edges of his thoughts. “The ship is _giving_ him energy. That’s why he hasn’t been sleeping. Why he hasn’t needed to.”

Eli made an expansive _who cares?_ gesture. “Either way, it’s equally creepy! Equally bad!”

“Why bad?” Young asked.

“Because! In order for that transfer to work,” Eli said, glaring at Rush, “you’ve got to be able to interconvert matter and energy to at least some degree.”

Rush adjusted his glasses, not looking at either of them. “That _is_ the implication,” he said.

“So?” Eli demanded.

Rush shrugged, as though he didn’t know what Eli wanted.

“Can you do it,” Eli said ferociously.

Rush darted a glance at Young and then looked away again.

“Do _what?”_ Young asked, frustrated.

“ _Ascend_!” Eli shouted. “Can you _ascend?_ ”

There was a short silence.

“No,” Rush said finally. “Interconversion of matter and energy is necessary but not sufficient. You might conceptualize it as one step along the path, rather than the ultimate—“

“Don’t give me that crap,” Eli cut him off. His voice was strained and vicious. In one abrupt move, he stepped forward and slammed Rush’s laptop shut. “I know where this is going, and I don’t like it. I watched those stupid tapes that Homeworld Command made, okay? What the fuck are you going to do, go play happy glowy tea parties in the afterlife while the rest of us are stuck actually _living our lives_ down here, like we’re supposed to, like _humans_ are supposed to? Do you seriously not think that’s, like, the biggest fucking cop-out that anyone could possibly pull? But especially you. _Especially_ you. And that’s assuming you don’t just fucking _kill_ yourself, or end up like— that Goa’uld guy, with all the creepy fucking technology in his creepy fucking lab—“

“Eli,” Young said quietly. He glanced at Rush, but Rush hadn’t reacted.

“No,” Rush whispered. “It’s all right.”

Eli was pale-faced, still angry. “Don’t _do_ this,” he said. “You don’t have to do this. You want me to say it? Fine: we need you here. No one likes saying that because you’re such an _asshole_ all the time, but we need you. That’s why some of us have done a hell of a lot of things we didn’t want to. For _you_. To _keep you here._ And you _owe_ us. You fucking _owe_ us, all right?”

“I know,” Rush said, barely audible.

“Yeah, sure. Sure you know. Sure you do.” Eli laughed humorlessly. “You don’t care what I say. I might as well be talking to a bulkhead. You’re going to do whatever you fucking feel like. As usual.” He picked his laptop. “I’ll see you at the briefing.”

Neither Rush nor Young stopped him as he stalked out of the room.

The two of them sat in silence for a while. Rush still wasn’t meeting Young’s eyes.

“Suspicious, huh?” Young asked at last, bitterly. “I’m so fucking suspicious.”

Rush didn’t say anything.

“How long have you been doing this energy conversion thing?” Young had a sense he should keep be keeping his thoughts neutral, but he wasn’t feeling very neutral. He was thinking about the way Rush had touched his hair. That absent touch, which had seemed so out of character that Young had questioned its motive even then. He was thinking about the times when Rush _had_ slept, when he’d fallen asleep with Young’s arm around his shoulders, and Young _knew_ he’d been asleep, and then he’d— what? Woken himself up? Crept out from under that witless arm and gotten dressed in the darkness, while Young lay there like an idiot and slept—

“Since the Nakai attacked,” Rush said. His voice was flat.

Young nodded levelly. “And that seemed like a good idea to you?”

“Fuck off,” Rush said, suddenly vicious, squaring his shoulders. “You think that after everything that happened to _you_ , much less _me,_ I could make it through the attack and taking the ship and trying to _protect_ you without some kind of fucking _assistance?_ ”

“Oh, this is about _protecting_ me? Of course it is. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I knew you wouldn’t like it,” Rush said, practically throwing the words at him.

“So you— what? Thought you’d just lie to me instead? And that would be better. Right.” Young shook his head in disbelief. “Why are you still doing it after _ten days?”_

“I’m not _doing_ anything,” Rush said coldly. “As you pointed out. I’m just— not saying no.”

“No. When do you ever,” Young said.

That provoked a savage spike of emotion, something furious and wounded. “And what the _fuck_ is that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re going to start saying no now. Right now.”

Rush tossed his hair back. “Now isn’t a convenient time for me.”

Young eyed him incredulously. “I wasn’t making a suggestion.”

“Oh, what, you think that because on _one occasion_ you made the permanent, unilateral decision to sink your hooks into my brain, that means you _own_ me now? That you get to decide what I do with my body? I don’t think so. Fuck off.” Rush turned his chair away dismissively.

Young grabbed the chair and turned it back in a harsh, jerky motion. “You’re doing it, or I’m doing it for you.”

“As if you could,” Rush said, contemptuous. This was Rush at his most Rush, haughty and sneering, his mind a solid fortress with no chink of emotion in it. It seemed entirely of a piece with the Rush who’d connived at exploiting Young’s weaknesses and creeping out of his bed when he was asleep.

Young narrowed his eyes. He turned an exploratory gaze inwards, towards that vaguely defined floorboards section of his brain. He generally left it alone; he just thought of the whole area as _Rush_. Now he carefully lowered himself over the edge. He was always aware that there were things happening down there— that whole Rush ecosystem. Now he was looking for something else he could sense, something not native to that spectral dark. And, sure enough, he could _see_ it there, as though it had a physical presence: a luminescent river snaking in through the shadows and feeding out in a hundred hairline tributaries. The pulsing alien vein of the ship He studied it for a while: the shape of it, its currents. He mentally dipped a toe in to get a sense of its depth. Could he do that? Was it allowed? He _could_ do it. He felt the humming energy divert around him. He was pretty sure he could do other things as well, things that he’d used to only be able to do in the part of his brain that was his.

“You’re wrong,” he said to Rush abruptly. “I can. Cut it off, or I will.”

Rush made a disdainful gesture. “Fucking astound me, then.”

Young imagined dropping a levee into that river: something heavy and solid, made out the equivalent of industrial sand. Nothing was going to get past it. The immediate effect was—

 

pain                                                             it’s

 

_feilia towa en uervid est?                               neumnepotisset_

 

The shining hills of Altera and the silver grass and it was  
_crudelistas machinam asthentientem creare est_ cruel to but  
_o uervis en diemed leucentod! o ollas leucentas leucentas_  
_machinas o_ so so very far away

 

                               _convince_ him to do it because we don’t frankly  
                              have a lot of fucking options here Daniel and  
                              it’s not like anyone’s going to

                                                                                WHY is it so——

 _ELGIDOS               EST_                       he’s really

 

Beethoven! oh those fucking Romanzen she  
said and he liked to hear her swear it made him  
smile which she hated when she was angry I’m  
not joking I feel like you’re not taking me seriously  
Nick but then she would smile because she couldn’t  
not smile when he was smiling and it all went to  
fucking pieces from there

 

 _ne moltois habilistas canare luram donator_  
_temem Eu! eos pulla casmenes deicetque_  
_semper casmenens quod ea canevad ametque_  
_surridevad quia quia fuevad—_

_somme               neod                                      namet_

think of—

  

                                                  bitumen! He’d nicked a packet of fags off Jimmy McReddy and smoked one out  
                                                  by the shed because fuck Jimmy McReddy is why and Jimmy McReddy said What  
                                                  you on about then are you after a doing and he gave Jimmy McReddy a look he was  
                                                  still perfecting a very particular look that said You and I both know that you are about  
                                                  to cause me significant pain and I wish to cordially inform you that you are mistaken if  
                                                  you think that you are the one in control of this and Jimmy bent him over and slammed his  
                                                  head into the aluminium siding and he laughed even though there was blood his mouth because

 

_gelcies QUARE acua elgida est nacuam nametque_

_SCIOTOS!_

why are you always listening to the shields  
Young asked  
because  
they’re  
beautiful  
 

_possibilitas essed quod mundom alterum envueniamos cresdes?_

 

                     _em caputei dolhet_                     hewhat’s the word

 

 _dolheo dolhes dolhet dolhemos_  
_dolhetes dolhent_ that’s what he  
_dolhevad dolhest_ and _dolhetor_

_conagite de                                                                                 gelcie_

_et sic transit sic transit          et      id fiomor_

 

“Everett!”

Young pulled out of Rush’s mind, grabbing the edge of a console to stay upright.

The AI had appeared beside him, looking furious. He’d never seen that kind of expression on Sheppard’s face. He actually took a step back, stumbling as he tried to stay oriented in the wash of agony that was drumming at him from Rush’s direction.

“Remove it,” the AI hissed.

“Why should I?” Young shot back. “This is what he actually feels like. This is what he _should_ feel like after a week with no sleep.”

“How are you doing this?” it demanded. “You are not meant to have this capability. Your role is to preserve his function so that he may complete the mission. Otherwise, you must not interfere.”

“Stop,” Rush said weakly. His eyes were shut.

“Oh, fuck you,” Young said to the AI. Maybe a little bit to Rush. “What do you get out of this? You’re just giving him energy out of the goodness of your heart? I don’t think so. You haven’t _got_ a heart. You don't _feel._ You’ve got fucking— _algorithms._ You’re using this to _change_ him, aren’t you? To _convert_ him, or whatever other nice word you want to pull out of your ass to cover up the fact that you’re _killing_ him, probably, with your goddamn virus and your—“

“The energy is facilitating certain modifications, yes,” the AI said, agitated. “But it is allowing him to function. You _want_ him to feel like this? You _want_ him to suffer?”

“Yes!” Young snapped. “I absolutely fucking do, if the alternative is that he _stops being a person._ He’s not a _machine_. Do you understand that?”

“Gloria,” Rush said.

Both Young and the AI froze, looking over at him.

“Go,” Rush said, shivering. “I’ll talk to him.”

“Nick,” the AI said, sounding pained. It blurred slightly, and suddenly it looked like Daniel Jackson. “Please let me—“

“It’s all right,” Rush said vaguely. “I’ll be all right. Go.”

It vanished.

There was a long silence. Young watched Rush, who was still shivering violently. He was hunched over his console, tense and rigid, looking like there was nothing to him but tendon and bone. Young was still shockingly angry at him, but it was hard to keep that feeling simple and clean and fenced-off when something inside him just wanted to shove Rush into bed.

“You’re just— full of surprises, aren’t you,” Rush said unsteadily, when he had managed to get more of a handle on his thoughts. “You’re going to have to— take down that block.”

“It’s not good for you,” Young said tightly.

“No. But from a practical standpoint, it’s necessary. We’re supposed to be dropping out of FTL to refuel, and we’re likely to—“ He broke off, briefly overwhelmed by the intensity of his headache. It took him a moment to find the thread of his sentence again. “To find ourselves in a firefight by the end of the day. We can’t— afford to be compromised. Either of us.”

“You could make that argument practically any time. I have to draw the line somewhere.”

“And you’ve neatly demonstrated that you can draw it whenever and wherever you like. So.” Rush’s voice hitched in a way that reminded Young of something, something that had happened in a dream. It was the sound of him struggling to control his tone and emotions. “So I’m asking you— not to do this now. _Please._ ”

Young had to walk away for a second. He stood facing the room’s far wall. He was so— He couldn’t— How had Rush known? he wondered. But then, it wasn’t surprising. That had always been Rush’s most lethal gift. He wasn’t likable; he wasn’t particularly good at lying. He just knew exactly where to strike. Where it would hurt most. Where you were weakest. Like he had a map of your body. Or like he’d created the map. He knew because he’d cultivated all the weak spots. He’d softened you up. He’d slept in your bed—

And he’d said _please._

“Fine,” Young said, his voice tightly controlled. He turned around and deconstructed the levee he’d dropped into the energy stream.

Rush’s headache vanished, and his shivering gradually dwindled to nothing. Structure emerged from the chaos in his head. He took a shaky breath and straightened gingerly, raking his hair back. He was moving like he didn’t quite trust his body yet.

Young looked at him, considering several variations on the ultimatum he’d already forced Rush to accept. There was nothing else he could say, really. Nothing that would make a difference.

“I didn’t—“ Rush began without looking at him. “It wasn’t my intention to—“

“Forget it,” Young said shortly. He turned towards the door. “Let’s go fly through the fucking star.”

* * *

The science team’s briefing on the plan to fly through the star was short. They’d developed a three-pronged plan to avoid contact with enemy ships, the first prong of which involved minimizing time spent outside the star, the second prong of which required Destiny to override safeguards in the navigational computer and change course while actually still inside the star, and the third prong of which was an ingenious diversion that Eli had come up with. The diversion would involve taking the shuttle they’d acquired from the seed ship, setting it on autopilot, and programming it to broadcast on Nakai frequencies. It could serve as a decoy, but if the Nakai actually took it on board, a sleeper program onboard would overload their engines upon receipt of the correct code from Destiny.

It all seemed pretty sound, and an hour and a half later Young made his way to the bridge just ahead of the scheduled drop out of FTL. The science team was already arrayed there; as Young entered, Rush was leaning over Chloe, inspecting her monitor, and Chloe was saying, “Could you not do that? You’re making me nervous; go harass Eli.”

“I think I’ve harassed Eli enough today,” Rush said.

Eli shot him a dark look.

“Rush,” Young said as he dropped into the central command chair. “Are we good to go?”

Rush nodded. His face was composed and remote. “We’re about to drop out,” he said.

The lurch out of FTL came, and the viewscreen exploded with sudden radiance. The star took up the entire forward view: enormous, intense, rendered angrily bronze-tinted by the protection of the glass. The bridge was bathed in gold light. It felt like they were flying into a firestorm, but a strangely serene one. There was something hypnotic about it. It was the kind of thing that made you want to fly into it whether you were equipped to or not, maybe for the same reason that moths flew into flames.

Young found that thought disturbing, for some reason. He tightened his grip on his chair arms. “Report,” he said.

“Multiple contacts,” Eli said. “Looks like a command ship. They’re scrambling to intercept.”

“Will they make it?”

“Yup.”

Young pulled out his radio. “This is Young to port shuttle bay. Launch when ready.” Without turning to look at Rush, he projected crisply, //Main weapon or shields?//

//We have to break through,// Rush said with the same coolness. //Go with the main weapon.//

“Bring the main weapon online,” Young ordered Park.

“This is the port shuttle bay,” Brody called over the radio. “The shuttle is away.”

The first salvo of enemy fire impacted their shields as the shrieks of the proximity detectors and the first of the power failure alarms began to combine in an anxious cacophony.

“Shields just dropped ten percent,” Eli shouted.

Twelve feet away, his features illuminated by the copper light that suffused the bridge, Rush tightened his grip on the monitor banks that made up Chloe’s station. He was leaning forward, his heart pounding and his muscles shaking, his mouth suddenly gone dry. He wanted— He needed to—

The chair. Thechairthechairthechairthechairthechair. In Ancient they called it _cathedra_ that was the right word for it yes not just the throne the sacred seat but all connotations of spirearchspacebeauty and he needed and he wanted to—

Young was quick to disengage from Rush’s thoughts. He couldn’t afford to get trapped in that biochemical loop right now. _Rush_ couldn’t afford to, but it was happening anyway; he was heading for the exit, and the bridge doors were already opening, and _God,_ they had already been here; Young set his mouth grimly; they had done all of this before—

“Nope,” he said, standing and grabbing Rush by the shoulders. “It’s not happening.”

Rush stared at him. His pupils were hugely dilated. “But,” he said uncertainly. “But I need to—“

A second salvo of enemy fire impacted their shields.

“Fire the main weapon,” Young ordered Park. “Let’s open up that course.”

She fired two shots along their planned trajectory.

Rush pushed clumsily at Young’s hands on his shoulders, trying to fight his way free. But he was having to wrestle with Young’s mind, too, where Young was trying to force him into stillness, or at least break him free of the siren-call of the chair. It was making him slow, and the call itself was dulling his instincts.

“Our shields just dropped by twenty-five percent!” Eli called.

“ _Twenty-five percent_?” Young repeated.

“The weapon takes a lot of energy!”

A sudden blast rocked the bridge as the first round of enemy fire reached them. Young recognized the alarm that indicated a hull breach before Volker confirmed it, shouting out the affected section. Young wasn’t listening. He was struggling to keep Rush stationary.

“Reroute power to forward shields,” he snapped.

“Please,” Rush panted. “Please?” His eyebrows drew together in an unfocused, questioning look, as though he thought, but wasn’t sure, that this might be the magic code word.

Young’s immediate reaction was to recoil at the nakedness of the manipulation. But Rush was so fucking out of it by this point that he probably didn’t even know what he was doing. He had no idea why what he’d just said was— upsetting. 

Still, the fractional pause it created was enough for Rush to get the upper hand. He slipped out of his jacket, fast and squirrelly, and was halfway across the bridge before Young realized what had happened. There was no way Young was going to catch him now.

No one on the bridge seemed to even have noticed the brief struggle.

Young pulled out his radio. “Young to Greer,” he said, and then stopped. History suggested that it was going to be really fucking hard to keep Rush out of that chair. Young didn’t have control over the situation, and the last thing he needed was to tie up his resources in a separate fight while they were— well. Things weren’t looking good.

He sighed. “Rush is on his way to the chair room,” he said. “Can you— keep an eye on him for me?”

Greer said, sounding uncertain, “Do you want me to…?”

“Just— keep an eye on him.” Young turned his attention back to the battle. “How long till we reach the star?” he asked Chloe.

“Three minutes,” she said grimly.

At the back of Young’s mind, Rush was sprinting through the dark hallways, not even feeling the pain in his feet. The lights flared for him as he passed, like the stars rushing by, like he was running faster than light.

“What’s our status?” Young snapped, trying to balance the two viewpoints: the bridge, preserved in amber by the star’s nearness, and the dim blue corridors that Rush was running through.

“Shields are down to thirty percent shipwide with focal weakening,” Eli reported. His hands were flying over the monitor. “They’re going to keep getting through.”

Another burst of enemy fire sent sparks flying, bright white against the red-gold glare.

“We can’t tolerate these hull breaches,” Volker said, his voice rising in panic. “Our shielding’s so low that we won’t be able to make it through the star!”

“Do we have enough energy to jump back to FTL?” Young asked.

Eli looked at his monitor as though willing it to alter. After a second, he said, “No.”

Rush had reached the chair room. The part of Young that was always with him _ached_ for him to make it into the chair, to cross those few final feet and reach releaserewardsalvationfulfillment and then and then he was doing it he was there and—

“Stay on course,” Young said tightly.He looked at Chloe. “How long?”

“Twenty seconds.”

“We have another breach,” Eli said. Young could feel it distantly, a far-off shudder.

The chair’s capacitors were charging, and Rush, his eyes closed, had already started to join with the ship. He let go gladly; he wanted that dissolution.

“Ten seconds,” Chloe said quietly. She looked at Eli, who shook his head.

All those little threads flying apart and finding their right places and then the oncoming wave of darkness darkness darkness WHITE—

They plunged into the solar corona. Vortices of plasma coiled around the body of the ship, hot snakes in a surrounding weightless inferno.

Young closed his eyes and held his breath.

“Eli,” Volker said. “I’m reading that all incoming solar energy is being routed directly to the shields. Is that—“

“That’s not me,” Eli said, checking his display.

“Internal—“ Chloe began shakily. “Internal temperatures seem to be holding.”

“There must be a protocol for—“ Eli broke off. He turned, his eyes flicking to where Young was still holding Rush’s jacket. “Yeah. There must be a protocol.”

“Lay in the new course,” Young said. “How long till we emerge?”

“Five hours,” Chloe said. “That should give us enough time to recharge.”

“Great,” Young said, trying not to sound as exhausted as he felt. “I’m going to go take a look at some of those hull breaches, see if there’s anything we can do about them right now. Let me know if you need me back here.”

As he was exiting the bridge, he pulled his radio out. “Greer?” he said quietly.

There was a short silence.

Greer said, “I’m here.”

Young sighed and tried to think of what to tell him.

“Stay with him,” he said.

* * *

Half an hour later, Young was helping reroute critical wiring away from one of the damaged areas of Destiny’s hull. He was in a corridor somewhere along the ship’s starboard side, trying to lose himself in the manual work. He could feel the ship slowly warming, brightening like a plant that was responding to the presence of the sun. It should have been welcome, that feeling.

Young was trying to focus on what he was doing and not think about how fucked up things were. He’d fucked up by not letting Rush just go straight to the chair. And Rush: Rush had _definitely_ fucked up, because maybe Young would’ve trusted him if he hadn’t—

“You’re making a terrible mess of that,” a familiar voice said from over his left shoulder.

Young jumped, dropping the pliers he’d been using to strip the wiring. He turned to stare at the figure leaning casually against the bulkhead. “No,” he snapped. “You do _not_ get to look like him. That is _way_ the hell too confusing for _everyone_.”

Rush— or whatever it was that currently looked like Rush— pulled back, startled. “You think I’m the AI,” he said after a moment, realizing.

“Aren’t you? _He’s_ in the chair.”

“I’m projecting.”

The corridor around Young wavered and began to dissolve, melting into a narrow, damp, gray-green, unevenly paved street. Young looked up, startled, at clouds scudding over the sharp-spired roof of a stone building. It was— disorientating. He could still feel the hum of the ship, but he could also taste rain in the air, and hear the far-off sound of traffic.

“What—“ he began.

“You said the shuttle was boring,” Rush said with an insouciant shrug. “This is a similar interface. I thought I’d indulge your need for novelty.” He leaned against a slightly yellowed stone wall and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, tapping one out and holding it delicately between two fingers.

Now that Young got a better look, Rush did resemble the version of himself from the shuttle. He was wearing the same pristine glasses, the same white collared shirt. He had the same neatly trimmed hair. And there was that same air of something _undamaged_ about him, like he was more substantial somehow, like something important about him hadn’t been chipped out.

Rush didn’t seem to mind the scrutiny. He smiled faintly and lowered his eyes. “I’d offer you a cigarette,” he said, “but I’m afraid they’re not real, in the classical sense of the word.”

“I don’t smoke,” Young said.

“Good for you. It’s a terrible habit.” Rush flicked a lighter and applied its flame to the end of his cigarette.

“Why are you _here?_ ” Young asked, trying to keep his voice level. He wasn’t— really sure how to feel about what was happening right now. “Why are you doing this?”

Rush squinted up at the pale, clouded sky over the spiky rooftops. “Do you not like it? I could—“ He gestured with the hand holding the cigarette. Abruptly, the temperature dropped and it began to snow: big, lacy flakes that were almost cartoonishly pretty. They caught on eddies of wind and swirled, buoyed by their own width.

Young held his arms out and watched the snow collect on the sleeves of his black uniform jacket. It was very lifelike. Very beautiful. He had to give Rush that. “Is this—“ he began. “Supposed to be some kind of apology?”

Rush’s eyes slid away. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said guardedly.

Young fixed him with an uncompromising look.

Rush sighed. “I didn’t—” he said, sounding pained. “If it makes a difference, I didn’t _make_ you sleep.”

“I don’t believe you,” Young said flatly.

“Nothing I say is going to change that, is it?”

“Do you blame me?”

“No,” Rush whispered. “Probably not.” He stared, unseeing, at the end of his cigarette, at the thin gray smoke that was rising in a sinuous line through the snow. “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “I know you don’t believe that, either.”

Young didn’t say anything. He was finding it difficult to look at Rush. There was something just really— _soft_ and almost _inviting_ about him. A dark green scarf had appeared around his neck, dotted by snowflakes. More snow was collecting on the rims of his glasses, catching in his eyelashes, feathering his head, and Young was overcome by the urge to reach out and brush it off. Eventually, he gave in: his hand pausing and lingering for a moment as he almost touched Rush’s hair.

“You’re different when you’re like this,” he said at last.

Rush gave him a tired smile. “Better?”

“I don’t know about _that_ ,” Young said. “Just— different.”

“Better,” Rush said again. It wasn’t a question this time.

“Why do you _think_ that?” Young asked, abruptly frustrated. “You fuck yourself up by letting the ship _poison_ you with whatever it’s pumping you full of, you go and sit in the goddamn chair; you’re so fucking determined not to be human, but you _are human_.”

“There’s a part of me that is,” Rush said quietly. “But that part is— fading.”

“What the fuck does that _mean?_ ” Young dropped his hand and turned away.

“I’m sorry,” Rush said again. He was staring at the ground, his cigarette burning itself out.

“What are you apologizing to _me_ for?” Young said. “You don’t owe me anything. If your never-ending quest for new and exciting ways to destroy yourself means you’re going to keep bullshitting me— yeah, okay, maybe I’ll kick you out of my bed.” He closed his eyes. “That sounds— weird. Anyway. But what I don’t get is that you don’t _care_ , that you won’t _fight_ for your own right to even— I don’t know— _exist in the world_.”

Rush didn’t say anything.

“But maybe that’s _my_ job,” Young said. “That’s all I’m good for, right? Fighting. According to you. If I’m even good at that.” He laughed bitterly. “So I guess I’m going to do my job. I’m going to fight, because someone’s got to do it. Someone’s got to keep you human. Someone’s got to keep you here.”

“It’s not possible,” Rush whispered. “It can’t be done.”

Young said, “I don’t believe you.”

They stood for a moment, looking at each other. All around them, the snow continued to fall, so thick now that it almost obscured a nearby lamppost. A peal of bells started ringing, very far off. It was joined by another, and then another, each a fraction of a beat behind, a whole silvery tumult that sounded medieval. A flock of birds startled from a nearby tower, wings like pen-marks against the snow-filled sky. A door creaked open somewhere out of sight, loosing a scattering of laughter.

“…Where are we, anyway?” Young asked.

Rush shrugged almost imperceptibly. “Oxford. Catte Street. Do you like it?”

“It’s…really peaceful,” Young said. He paused. “And it feels like an apology.”

“Fuck off,” Rush said without rancor. “I haven’t heard _you_ apologizing.”

“Yeah.” Young winced. “I shouldn’t have stopped you from sitting in the chair.”

“ _Thank_ you. Look at us. Two civilized fucking people.”

“You won’t remember this, though? Will you?”

“I very much doubt it.”

“So you’ve just tricked me into apologizing to you twice.”

Rush’s mouth quirked. “To be fair, you never actually said you were sorry.”

“And now I’m not going to, either.” But Young was fighting a smile.

“If you—“ Rush broke off and his eyes went unfocused. Oxford shivered around them, briefly overlaid like a ghost on Destiny’s halls.

“What is it?” Young asked anxiously.

“The Nakai just dropped out. But it’s fine. They’re tracking the shuttle at the moment. I infer from previous experience they they can likely monitor our course through the star, but it’s unlikely they’ll be able to determine our position accurately enough to position an effective ambush as we emerge.”

“I should go anyway,” Young said. “—I guess.” He was weirdly reluctant to leave. And not just because he missed Earth.

“Yes,” Rush said, sounding similarly reluctant.

The scene began to melt away piece by piece. The comfortable sounds, the chill in the air, the sky, the spires of the buildings. The last thing to go was the snow, which kept whispering through the corridor, vanishing before it reached the deck. Then only Rush was left.

“Go on,” Rush said. “Go finish fixing my ship up. I’ll keep an eye on things outside.”

“ _Your ship?_ ” Young repeated, scandalized.

But Rush, looking smug, had already disappeared.


	23. Chapter 23

Young was lying on his back, half inside a bulkhead, wielding a portable welder that Brody had liberated from the machine shop. The flame heated up the enclosed space and carved a small blind spot into his visual field as sparks rained down around him, impacting the deck plates and fading away to nothing as he worked. He was couldn’t help but think of the snow that had lingered as Rush’s interface vanished, lasting just long enough to not quite touch the deck.

“Colonel Young, this is Eli,” his radio crackled.

He flipped off the welder and wiped a sheen of sweat from his forehead. “Go ahead.”

“We’ll be emerging from the star in about ten minutes.”

“How’s our power level?”

“We’re at a hundred percent, backups fully charged. Hopefully we won’t use it all up in a firefight getting out of here.”

“Yeah, I second that. Hang on, I’ll be right there.” Young pulled himself to his feet and headed for the bridge.

When he arrived, he found to his surprise that Wray was there. She was standing next to the command chair, staring thoughtfully into the sea of red-glow currents that filled the front screen.

“You can have the chair, if you want,” he offered.

She shot him a short smile. “It’s not really my style.”

He sank into it, mindful that she hadn’t moved from beside him. “Chloe, how long?” he asked.

“Six minutes.”

“There’s a rumor,” Wray said quietly, “that Rush is in the interface chair right now.”

“Correct,” Young said. “He’s been there for the past five hours.”

“Five _hours_?”

“We may need him when we come out of the star. There’s going to be a window while the drive powers up when we’re vulnerable to attack.”

There was a brief silence.

“I didn’t mean to sound accusatory,” Wray said.

Young considered whether or not he thought this was true. He was pretty sure she’d come to talk to him about Rush— that it was the only reason she was on the bridge. “I didn’t mean to sound defensive,” he said at last.

“I’m sure you’re doing your best. You both are.” She was still staring out into the star. Very carefully she asked, after a short pause, “Did you ever find out what happened between him and Colonel Telford?”

Young looked at her sharply. “—I did,” he said.

He didn’t elaborate. She had turned her head and was watching him closely.

“That bad?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

She shut her eyes briefly. “Telford is on the short list of people the IOA is planning to send to the Destiny as soon as they devise a plan for dialing in. There’s a possibility I could get him off that list, but I would need more information.”

“I’ll think about it,” Young said shortly.

“You need an ally,” she said.

“I have allies.” He wasn’t sure if he really believed that.

“You need someone to talk to,” she said more quietly.

Young kept his face impassive. “I’ll think about it,” he said.

“Three minutes,” Chloe called.

“We’ve got sensors!” Eli said. “I’m picking up two— no, three Nakai ships about 600 kilometers to port and kind of, um, underneath us? Chloe, I’m sending you the raw data to process.”

“The Nakai are moving to intercept,” Volker warned.

“What’s the status of the FTL drive?” Young asked Park.

“Two minutes,” Park said. “We can’t power it up till we’re out of the coronasphere.”

“Put us at maximum sublight. Let’s get out of here as fast as possible.”

“One minute till we clear the corona,” Chloe said.

The coils of plasma were fading, and the black edge of space was beyond. Young squinted at the viewscreen, instinctively hunting for a glimpse of the enemy ships.

“The leading edge is within firing range,” Volker said, just as the bombardment hit them.

The shields flared, blue and gold and green, so bright that they nearly obscured everything on the port side of the ship. For a moment, Young almost imagined that he could hear a hint of them— the points where they flowered as the Nakai weapons made contact.

“It’s beautiful, in a way,” Wray said quietly.

Young glanced at her. When he looked back at the viewscreen, he saw a familiar figure, dark against the flaring light, standing in the spot next to Chloe’s station that Rush preferred. His shoulders were hunched, his head bent forward, his hand pressed against his mouth as he watched the assault on the shields. Young couldn’t make out his expression.

In the next instant he was gone.

“FTL is spooling up,” Park said.

Young could feel the vibration under the deck plates. After a few seconds, the bright display of the shields gave way to blurred stars, and there was an audible sigh of relief as the forward view took on its familiar streaking darkness.

“Good work,” Young said. He glanced at Wray. “You want to hold down the fort? I’ve got— some things to take care of.”

“I imagine you do,” she said. She looked down. She was touching Rush’s jacket, which Young had draped over the arm of the command chair.

* * *

The control interface room was still dimly lit, despite the restored power levels. Young wondered if Rush liked it that way. Young himself found it disturbing. Maybe that was because he found the room itself disturbing. He thought that he probably always would. There was something about seeing Rush there, motionless, almost frozen— blue lights glowing from the bolts at his temples, wrists and ankles locked to the chair—

“He’s okay,” Greer said from beside the doorway. “I mean— as much as he can be.”

“Yeah,” Young said. He saw that Greer had laid his jacket over Rush, carefully tucking it around him. It was a surprisingly sweet gesture, for a man who wasn’t given to sweetness. He glanced back at Greer.

Greer shrugged. “It was cold,” he said, a little defensively.

“Yeah,” Young said again. “It was.”

He headed to the chair, with its polished interface panel waiting for the touch of his hand.

This time, entering the interface was a lot like climbing into the mental construct that he had of his own head, maybe because he’d gotten so used to conceptualizing what he was seeing that way. There was his own orderly mind, and there was the subterranean realm that underlay it, the part of his world that belonged to Rush— though as he paused and looked closely, with the clarity the interface afforded, he was startled to realize that there were places where the two now seemed to blend. Structures that were distinctly _Rush_ had started to colonize his own landscape: windows and furniture seemed to have taken on vaguely Ancient shapes, silver and spire-y and strange to him. Rooms were cluttered with objects that he didn’t recognize. Where had that piano come from? And that bowl full of marbles? Someone had dripped water all through a hallway; someone had been scribbling in chalk on the walls of the house; pages from the small notebooks that Rush favored were strewn across sofas and tables. It should have disturbed Young, but in fact he found it oddly domestic. It felt _right_ in a way that he couldn’t explain.

When he ventured below, where Rush was waiting, his own presence was less visible. Rush’s mind had always been obscure to him, and even if that hadn’t been the case, all he could see was the stream of energy from the ship. It glowed bright-hot in the darkness, green and eerie, dominating every part of Rush. Its capillaries flowed in every direction, including the point where Rush’s mind joined with Young’s. When Young first tried to separate Rush from the ship, he couldn’t even find the right boundaries to pull at— everything was just _ship-colored_ , all of it looking and sounding and feeling the same. He tried shouting out to the little threads of Rush that always seemed to recognize him, but there was a _noise_ to that energy stream, too, a staticky buzzing, and it drowned him out. There was no _way_ he’d be able to get Rush loose without cutting off the stream— even if he’d wanted to, which he didn’t, or not particularly. He was glad to have a rational reason for what he’d wanted to do in the first place, which was to hurl a high, solid, and more permanent levee up.

As soon as he’d done that, the noise of the energy began to fade. The light died out a little more slowly, but he was already calling to Rush, getting those threads to respond, and they _were_ responding, and they were coming loose with hardly any effort. In fact, as he could see more and more of Rush sketched out in the darkness, he found it astonishingly easy to separate him from the ship— all he had to do was touch those places and they sprang free, without any resistance at all.

Of course, he should have guessed that there would have been a catch. As the CI room faded back in around him, he discovered almost immediately what it was. Rush’s mind slammed into his with an onslaught of

 

disarray disarray _dolhet DOLHET_

 

_set                               quei dolhet?                    quem quei dolhet?_

he was

_eger est? aute—_

 

 __ sick? something was not

 _lantea discest et nehil de illod ute ne fieri potisessomos_  
_en alterad mondod mellored opportunitad habesont_  
_scies ute weros essed_ scies _que neum adcapere potisses!_

_et Neum ersaes id deicet Ersaes_

 

right he thinks but he means

_duenos fuevad et neum ad everett deicevad_

 

 

                                                            the noise a hyperdrive element makes when you’re tuning its  
                                                     crystals and someone had something Shor’s algorithm who had  
                                                            it been her name was and she said Nick don’t Nick

 

and in a moment they heard the soldiers who were

_memorator?_

shouting The sea the sea and passing the word

_memorator?_

along and likewise the troops of the rearguard broke

_ne memoratorque et ei sollicitandos est_

into a run and the pack animals and the horses began

_em somme penitet_

racing ahead

 _em quod neum deicevad penitet em penitet_ he should have  
                                                                                 said it

 _ad primom eventom quod feilia eos luram en alvod templod_  
                     _canevad et id flevad quia iconans mortuom ad mentim eos_  
_vuenievadque scievad ute—_

 

and _God,_ Young was getting tired of this. His vision wavered as the intensity of Rush’s headache settled behind his eyes. He almost couldn’t stay standing; he thought for a second he was going to vomit, and he had to block, at least a little; he shoved the window down between them halfway, and that was at least— that was— he could _breathe_ , enough to grope forward and get his hand on Rush’s shoulder, which helped a little with the nausea.

//Rush?// he said. Rush hadn’t moved at all.

“Yes,” Rush murmured. “Something’s not—“ His hands went to his temples, pressing there for a moment as though he was trying to hold something together or hold something in.

“Are you all right?” Young said, alarmed.

“Did you do something?” Rush asked vaguely. “I don’t feel— right.”

He tried to stand and stumbled immediately, letting Young catch him.

“Whoa, okay there,” Young said, getting an arm under his shoulders. “Yeah, you’re really tired.”

“Tired?” Rush squinted at him, looking confused. Gradually his expression changed to one of hurt. “Are you _blocking_ me?”

“Just for a little while,” Young said. “One of us has to be able to stand up.” His hand touched Rush’s bare skin, and he flinched. “Jesus, you’re freezing. Here— Greer, grab your jacket, and let’s get his on him.”

Rush was uncharacteristically docile as Young and Greer manhandled him into his jacket. He stared at one oversized sleeve and then the other as though he’d never seen such a thing in his life, turned them this way and that in fascination. When Young had finished doing up the jacket’s buttons, Rush looked from him to Greer and then back. “What’s happening?” he asked, sounding perplexed.

It wasn’t an unreasonable question, but Young was already beginning to get the sense that something was going on here— something beyond simple exhaustion— and Rush’s tone triggered a surge of unease.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Young asked cautiously.

Rush frowned. “The last? Temporal sequencing is hard for me. You know that.”

Young met Greer’s eyes in worry. “Give it a shot anyway,” he suggested.

“Amestis Givoras composed a seven-part mirror fugue in memory of the Lantean dead. It was performed only once before the plague reached Dulcestiom Uervis and laid waste to the academy there. Those unaffected by the plague fled to Discenna, hoping that they might—“

“ _What?_ ” Greer interrupted.

“Okay, good try,” Young said. “But I’m thinking we should just head straight to the infirmary.”

“That wasn’t correct?” Rush said, drawing his eyebrows together fretfully. “It should be algorithmically excluded if it doesn’t directly involve Nicholas Rush?”

“That’s probably a safe assumption,” Young said, trying to keep his voice soothing. “But don’t worry about it right now. Look, let’s not even bother with the infirmary. Let’s just get out of this creepy fucking room and go sit in the hall. Does that sound good?”

To Greer, he mouthed, _Go get TJ._ Greer nodded and took off.

“You failed to _specify_ ,” Rush complained, letting Young lead him from the room. “Isn’t it difficult enough that you’re composed of so many molecules? It’s extremely distracting. How do you keep them in the right shape?”

Young pushed him back gently against the corridor wall. “We’re sitting down now,” he said.

Rush frowned at him. “Are we? Why?”

“That’s just what we’re doing.” He nudged persistently at Rush’s shoulders until Rush got the idea and slid down to the floor. Young knelt beside him. Rush was shivering. When Young pressed a hand to his forehead, his skin was cold.

“You’re so— warm,” Rush murmured. “Profligate energy transfer. Mm.” He leaned into Young’s touch, pushing his forehead against Young’s hand a little like a cat. “Doesn’t entropy worry you? Or no. I suppose it wouldn’t. You’re so good at thermoregulating.”

“Rush,” Young said, his anxiety spiking. “What the fuck is going on?” He was trying to get a sense of Rush’s thoughts without taking down the block, but there was something disorganized and hard to parse about them. They seemed to be— _sideways_ , or not sideways, exactly, but tilted at an odd angle. Young couldn’t seem to rotate them in a way that made sense.

“That’s what _I_ asked,” Rush said. “I thought _you_ were going to tell _me.”_

“Did I do this? I think maybe I did this.”

“I concur,” Rush said unhelpfully. “Everything was fine before you.”

“Great. Thanks.” Young drew his hand back, ignoring Rush’s small sound of protest, and scrubbed at his face, feeling just— really defeated and scared. He had just _talked_ to Rush; Rush had been _fine_ ; it had been a few _hours_ ago, maybe; Rush had _smiled_ , and made it snow in Oxford, and they’d both apologized—

And then Young had gone into the interface and fucked everything up. But he _couldn’t_ hook Rush back up to that energy flow, that thing that was noisy and poisonous and iridescent and _changing_ him into something not _human_ , something that Young wouldn’t recognize—

“You’re upset,” Rush said softly.

“Yes. I am. I’m really upset, okay? I don’t know what’s happening to you.” Young took a breath, trying to stop his voice from wavering. “And I really need you to sharpen up a little so we can figure this out, all right? I really— I just really need that from you. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes,” Rush whispered.

“Okay. Can you tell me your name?”

“Nick,” Rush said after a few seconds.

“Do you know where you are?”

“Destiny.”

“What year is it?”

Rush frowned. “Which calendar are you using?”

“The normal one. The Earth one.”

“The first or second decade of the second millennium. Common Era.”

“Not your best work, but I’ll take it. Do you know why you were in the chair?”

“Destiny was afraid.”

“Sure. Close enough. You were getting energy from Destiny, remember? It was driving the replication of a virus.”

“Yes,” Rush said after a pause. “Amongst other things.”

“Yeah, I’m starting to get that,” Young said tiredly. “ _What_ other things?”

Rush’s gaze had drifted to the left, and his brow had creased. Young suspected that the AI was talking to him. He reached out and laid a hand against Rush’s face, catching his attention. Rush’s eyes flicked back to his. He brought his own hand up, pressing it against Young’s.

“What other things?” Young prompted.

“Improving our radius.”

“What else?”

“Not sleeping.”

“Right, we’ve pretty much covered that one. What else?”

“Fixing things.”

“What do you mean? What things?”

“Things that are broken.”

“Thanks. That’s so helpful.”

“You’re welcome,” Rush said vaguely.

Young sighed. “Rush. That was sarcasm.”

But Rush wasn’t listening. His attention had wandered again. “It was more like,” he said to the air over Young’s left shoulder, “building over a cognitive scaffold, if you know what I mean.” He made an unclear, one-handed gesture.

“Rush,” Young said. He tried shaking Rush’s head a little, gently. It didn’t seem to accomplish much.

“Well, scaffolding isn’t _meant_ to be permanent, is it?” Rush said absently. “So— of course not. But you can’t build something from nothing.”

Young pinched the bridge of his nose. “I hope the AI is finding this as frustrating as I am.”

“It isn’t composed of molecules,” Rush murmured, his eyes focusing once more on Young. “In the traditional sense. Though it still extends into a startling number of dimensions. I never realized.”

“I have no idea what that _means_ ,” Young said, frustrated. He tried to get the conversation back on track. “What else were you using the energy for?”

“Not eating.”

“ _God_. You’re such an idiot. Do I have to watch you all the goddamn time?”

“You’d do the same thing if you could. Those rations are intolerable.” Rush yawned hugely. “Are we done yet?”

“No. No, we’re not done. We’re—“ Young shut his eyes briefly. “We’re not _done_. I don’t know if you get that you’re a fucking _mess_ right now. And I need your help, because I don’t know what to _do_. Which is better for you, to get energy from Destiny or not?”

“Better,” Rush repeated, as though he didn’t understand the word.

“Yes, better. Better for _you._ ”

Rush seemed to be thinking it over. “Can you define the parameters of _me?_ ” he said uncertainly at last.

“Goddamnit, Rush—“

“I’m _trying_ ,” Rush said, temper flaring a little. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “I believe— I believe it depends on your primary endpoint. There is an inverse correlation between time and quality of life.”

“So if you take energy from the ship, you feel fine until—“

“Yes. Until.”

“And the alternative is that you—“

“Change,” Rush said. “Become— less human. But for longer. Option one would be preferable, except—“

“Except what?”

Rush looked down, biting his lip. “I thought it would help,” he whispered. “If I could see all the different dimensions. I thought it would be— but it isn’t. It doesn’t help.”

“ _God_ —“ Young clenched his free hand into a fist. “Except _what_ , Nick?”

“Except— I damaged your mind,” Rush said. His eyes flickered away for a moment, then came to rest on Young’s face. He reached out with a oddly intent expression and laid a hand against Young’s cheek, so that there was a strange mirror quality to their poses. “And the longer I stay with you, the more I can fix. Perhaps— perhaps I can fix it all. You could go back with the rest of them. You could be—“ He broke off and took a breath. “It would be easier. I would prefer that.”

“We’re going back together,” Young said fiercely.

“We’re not,” Rush said quietly.

“I won’t accept any other alternative.”

Rush said, barely audible, “I’m sorry, Everett.”

Young couldn’t look at him. He stared fixedly at the deck. He was thinking about the snow, melting before it reached the metal surface. The little drifts of it disappearing in midair. They’d been so perfect in every detail, down to the crisp irregular structures. They’d turned to water on his sleeves. He’d almost brushed them out of Rush’s hair. Some part of his brain that didn’t know any better had been fooled by the illusion. That was the mark of a really good magic trick. When you knew it wasn’t real, but you were still astonished, because some part of you wanted to believe—

“Look at me,” Rush murmured.

Young did.

Rush’s eyes were dark, stripped of deceit, and immensely serious. The thought came to Young unbidden that he would believe anything Rush said if he said it while looking at Young like this, and for a moment he experienced a deep and paralyzing fear that Rush _was_ going to say something, then an even more profound fear that Rush had said it already, that it had passed between them, that it was too late, and now Young would never really be able to not believe it.

Feeling abruptly claustrophobic and oddly terrified, he shoved himself away from Rush, aware as he did so that he was also trying to push Rush out of his mind, because they were too close, _too close_ ; it was— intolerable.

His back hit the opposite wall, but it wasn’t far away enough. He had to stumble to his feet and back off a few steps. His heart was racing. he was breathing hard. What was he doing, he thought. What was he _doing_. He turned and leaned one solid fist against the bulkhead, wishing that he could fit all of his terror into it, that he could tense up his knuckles and lash out with a single, satisfying act of violence, something that would punish only himself. But that wasn’t an option, not anymore. Now no matter what he did, he always seemed to be hurting the one person he didn’t want getting hurt.

And Rush was already hurt. And when Young turned to face him, he saw that in his absence, Rush had tipped his head back, both hands covering his face in a picture of desolation.

“Shit,” he breathed, crossing the hall to kneel beside Rush. “Nick, it’s okay. It’s okay.”

“Get the fuck away from me.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“What the fuck are _you_ sorry for?”

“Everything,” Young said. His throat hurt. “Is that— do you think that about covers it?”

“You’re very fucking confusing,” Rush said unhappily, but he let Young gather him into a kind of fumbling embrace. After a moment’s hesitation, he dropped his head against Young’s shoulder.

Young got both arms around him. He could feel how cold Rush was. He held tight and pressed his face to Rush’s hair. “I don’t know what you’re complaining about,” he whispered. “You’re the most confusing person I’ve ever met.”

Rush sent him a faint, miserable wave of acknowledgement.

A few minutes later, Greer and TJ arrived. TJ dropped her bag against the deck and immediately knelt down beside Young.

 _How is he?_ she mouthed.

Young lifted a hand from Rush’s back to make an equivocal gesture: _so-so._

“Dr. Rush,” TJ said gently. “Can you sit up for me?”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Rush said, his voice muffled by Young’s shoulder. “Just— cold.”

“ _Not_ just cold,” Young said, and shifted a little so that Rush was mostly sitting upright. “He’s been— in and out of it.”

“It’s very difficult to be _in_ it when one is perceiving nonmathematical dimensions delivering sensory input that one’s brain isn’t organized to interpret in a productive way,” Rush said somewhat irritably. “I challenge _anyone_ to function under—“

He flinched as the thermometer that TJ had stuck in his ear beeped.

TJ glanced at the number and frowned. “Well,” she said. “That would certainly explain why you’re cold.” She showed Young: 91.6 degrees. “He’s hypothermic— I’m hoping that explains his heart rate, which is on the high side. I don’t even know how it’s _possible_ to get hypothermic on this ship.”

“Thermoregulation,” Rush said, again flinching as TJ checked his eyes with a pen light.

“Yes?” TJ prompted. “Thermoregulation what?”

“Is difficult,” he said unhelpfully.

“Okay,” TJ said. She glanced at Young with a look that asked for translation.

Young shrugged. “He really hasn’t been making that much sense.”

“ _You_ don’t make much sense,” Rush said crossly.

Young sighed. “Yeah. We’ve established that. TJ, what’s the plan?”

“Well, we need to warm him up. It’s going to be bad news if his temperature gets below ninety degrees. His thinking may clear up as he gets a little warmer. He definitely needs to eat something and get some sleep— I should just record myself myself saying that on his phone,” TJ said, frowning at Rush, “and set it as an alarm at this point.”

Rush glared at her. “I’m not a child. Don’t discuss me in the third fucking person.”

TJ looked exasperated. “Maybe you could try not _acting_ like a child.”

“Can the warming-up part happen in my quarters? We’re getting tired of the infirmary,” Young said. He could sense that Rush was heading for a meltdown, and TJ’s presence hadn’t seemed to help that much in the past; mostly, to be fair, for reasons that had nothing to do with TJ herself, and more to do with Young’s reaction to her. Or Rush’s reaction to Young’s reaction to her, or Young’s reaction to Rush’s reaction to Young’s reaction— just because of the whole goddamn feedback loop. Young’s head hurt more just imagining it. _God_ , Rush was hard to deal with sometimes.

“We can try it,” TJ said. “I can bring some foil blankets from the infirmary if I have to. Mostly I want to get him out of the hallway.”

“Right.” Young shifted, trying to ease his arms around to where he’d be able to pick Rush up.

“Don’t even fucking think about it,” Rush snapped, jerking away abruptly and clambering very unsteadily to his feet. He stood there swaying for a minute, shivering violently, before Greer stepped in to brace him.

Young shut his eyes and breathed out his irritation. “Are you fucking _kidding_ me? You can barely stand up. Just let us—“

“ _I_ ,” Rush interrupted, leveling two shaky fingers at him, “am going along with this as a _favor_. To _you_. For your fucking—“ He couldn’t seem to think of the word he wanted, which made him agitated. “So don’t treat me like a fucking child!”

“You made that point already,” Young said shortly. “No one’s treating you like a child, Rush. We’re treating you like you’re _sick_ , which you _are_ , so maybe don’t—“

“Maybe you should be _grateful_ that I’m even _bothering_ to let you—“

“ _Grateful?_ ” Young laughed incredulously. “You think I’m _enjoying_ this? You think this is— what, _fun_ for me?” He forced himself to his feet, wincing as the pain in his head worsened.

“Guys,” TJ said in a placatory tone, “everyone’s really tired right now. Maybe we should just—”

“Fuck you,” Rush shot at Young, trying to shrug Greer’s hands off of his shoulders. “Fuck you and your condescending— your—“ He made a frustrated, agonized sound. “I’m doing this for you. For _you!”_

“If you need to _lie_ to yourself,” Young said, his voice rising, “and insist that this is happening to you for some reason beyond the fact that you made a series of really _stupid_ fucking decisions, and now you have to deal with the consequences because I won’t let you _wriggle out of them_ , like you always do, because I left you _no other fucking option_ — if you want to pretend that you’re in control when the fact is that you have _no fucking clue_ what you’re doing, then that’s just _fine_. Be my guest.”

“You think I couldn’t circumvent your _pathetic_ barrier?” Rush’s tone was ragged. “I create workarounds all fucking day. It’s what I do _best_. No one does _anything_ to me that _I don’t want_ , so if you think that— if you think that I—“ He made another unsuccessful attempt to wrestle his way out of Greer’s grip. “I don’t need you,” he said, his voice raw. “ _I don’t need any of you._ ”

“Shut up, Doc,” Greer murmured, not letting him go.

“Right. Of course. Keep telling yourself that,” Young said. “If you could get around that block, you’d’ve done it already. You don’t give that much of a damn about me. You can’t do a goddamn thing about it, and you _know_ it. So why don’t you just—“

“Stop it,” TJ whispered, just as Rush, pale and furious, said, “ _Fuck_ you. I should’ve— I should’ve—“

He didn’t finish his sentence. Greer abruptly jerked him backwards, steering him down the corridor, away from Young.

“Come on,” Young heard Greer say quietly. “Time to cool it down a little. You’re about to max out your quota on being a pain in the ass.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Young whispered, turning away. He pressed a hand to his forehead, trying to get a grip on the pain that was pulsing there. He wondered how much of it was coming from Rush, and how much of it was just— what he deserved, probably, for letting himself get so worked up.

Unexpectedly, TJ stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him, enveloping him in an achingly familiar hug. Young froze, swallowing hard against a surge of emotion, finding it difficult, for a moment, to breathe. Finally he brought his hands up, resting them against her shoulders.

“He does need you,” she murmured. “He needs all of us.”

“I know,” Young said with difficulty. “I know. I do.” He shut his eyes, letting himself breathe in the scent of her— antiseptic and the faint herbal fragrance of her hair, and something else that was just _her_ , that he would have known anywhere. It grounded him, and the pain in his head receded by a fraction.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked, pulling back slightly.

Young sighed. “Not really. No.”

“ _Should_ you talk about it?”

“Everyone keeps wanting me to _talk_ about stuff today. Do I look that fucking terrible?”

TJ studied him. “Well,” she said, “you’ve been better.”

Young grimaced. “Thanks.” He hooked a hand over his shoulder, wincing at the cramp in his neck. “God, I could use a cigarette.”

TJ gave him a puzzled look. “You don’t smoke,” she pointed out.

“Yeah. I don’t know why I said that.” He sighed again. “We should go. They’re getting far enough away that Rush and are going to start to feel it.”

“I thought—“ TJ began.

“Just— don’t ask,” Young said wearily.

He was already becoming aware of a vague sense of tension. He lowered the block between himself and Rush a little, and could sense that Rush had calmed down significantly— that Greer was talking to him in a low, soothing, reasonable voice, and Rush was half-listening, leaning heavily against Greer’s shoulder. Young felt a brief stab of envy, and something more defeated. _He_ was supposed to be able to do that for Rush. But somehow he just— couldn’t. He didn’t have the talent. Or he _could_ , but for some reason he never _did._ Was he really that fucked-up as a person, that he couldn’t do this basic human task? Was there something that broken about him?

He winced as his headache intensified.

“Let’s go,” TJ said. “Before you beat yourself up anymore.”

“You can tell?”

“You’ve got that look.”

They headed down the long corridor, following the trail of lights that glowed brightly wherever Rush went.

After a while, TJ said quietly, “You’re trying, you know. That’s all anyone can ask for. I think you’re both trying.”

“Trying. Right,” Young said without much energy.

* * *

They caught up to Greer and Rush at the door to Young’s quarters. Greer knew what he was doing; he had Rush in bed almost before the door had closed behind them, and was heading to the closet to look for extra blankets. Rush had curled up into a shivering knot. Young stood stiffly against the wall, watching as TJ unwrapped a power bar and tried to make Rush eat it.

“Later,” Rush said listlessly.

“No. Now. You’re lucky I’m not making you eat your weight in protein mix.”

Rush made a face and reluctantly took a bite from the power bar while Greer was layering blankets on top of him. TJ felt his forehead and frowned. After a few minutes she pulled out the thermometer and checked his temperature again. Rush didn’t protest; his attention seemed to have wandered. He was eating mechanically, but his eyes had moved to fix at some point over TJ’s shoulder. Young could tell that the AI was talking to him.

With a quick burst of irritation, he shoved himself into apposition with Rush so he could see it: looking like Daniel Jackson, wearing a white sweater and a hectoring look. “—And you wouldn’t be _having_ this problem if you had just practiced what we talked about,” it was saying in a faintly schoolteacher-ish tone. “If you had made any effort at all. I struggle to understand you, Nick. It is as though you wish to do yourself damage.”

//No one’s happy with you today,// Young remarked.

Rush’s eyes flicked to him, startled, as though he hadn’t noticed Young was present.

“Leave him alone,” Young told the AI aloud. “Get out.”

“What?” TJ said, confused.

“Not you,” Young said.

The AI regarded him narrowed eyes, crossing its arms across its chest tightly. After a moment, it disappeared.

“It’s not happy with you,” Rush murmured.

“I don’t really give a fuck,” Young said flatly.

“Can someone please explain what’s going on?” Greer asked.

Rush sighed. “Colonel Young is in the process of picking a fight with a sentient starship.”

TJ and Greer turned to regard Young with twin incredulous stares.

He shrugged. “I’d say it was picking a fight with me.”

TJ said uncertainly, “That… doesn’t sound like a great idea.”

“What’s it going to do? Slam doors in my face?”

“You know it’s capable of a great deal more than that,” Rush said. “And so does everyone else here. You might as well drop your ludicrous military posturing and admit that—“

“Hey,” Greer said, flicking him gently on the shoulder. “Take it down a notch.”

Amazingly, Rush stopped and drew a deep breath, making an effort to stay calm.

“Yeah, there you go. Now finish eating dinner so TJ and I can get out of here.”

“You eat it,” Rush said, pushing the half-eaten power bar towards him. “It’s disgusting.”

“Nope.” Greer pushed it back. “That’s all yours.”

“Then at least take him with you.” Rush nodded in Young’s direction.

Greer glanced at Young. “Pretty sure that one’s yours, too.”

Young turned his head away, staring at the far wall and willing himself not to admit he was hurt. He was glad when TJ made her way over to him.

“His temperature’s not going up,” she said quietly. “I don’t think this is normal.”

“No,” Young said tightly. “Of course it’s not.”

“I mean—“ she hesitated. “I think this might be the virus. Messing with his body temperature. I want to come back in a few hours and take some blood. I’ll know more after that. That way I can keep an eye on his temperature, too.”

“Right,” Young said. “Fine.”

“Everett—“ She touched his arm with a pained look. “I’ll stay if you want me to; I just thought—“

“No, it’s fine. We’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” she whispered. She gestured to Greer.

When they’d gone, Young stayed where he was, back against the wall and arms crossed against his chest. The room was very quiet, and the lights were dim and bluish. Rush lay curled under the heap of blankets, still shivering slightly. Young had pulled back from his mind, and was getting very little from it. Most of what he was sensing seemed to be in Ancient, anyway. Right now, that felt absurdly like a Keep Out sign.

Young thought maybe Rush would just go to sleep, and they’d be able to put off talking. It seemed easier. Young could go sleep on the couch; he could get _away_ from Rush, at least for a few hours. But after a while, Rush said in a barely audible voice, “You should make Greer your second, you know.”

Young said levelly, “Scott’s doing a perfectly fine job.”

There was a short silence.

“You’re just afraid he’d back me the next time I staged a coup.” It was a weak attempt at humor, and Rush knew it. There was something nervous and almost apologetic in his tone.

Another silence followed.

Young sighed and covered his face with his hands. “You were much better at this in the interface,” he said.

“We talked in the interface?”

“Yeah. You never remember.”

“No.”

“TJ says your brain can’t store the memories.”

“Yes,” Rush said. “I know.”

“You showed me Oxford and made it snow. As an apology.”

Rush was quiet. “That sounds nice,” he said at last, sounding wistful. “Well. Maybe not the snow part.”

“It was.”

“I wish—“ Rush swallowed. “I wish I could do that. Now.”

Young shut his eyes for a long time. “Okay,” he said finally.

“Okay?” Rush echoed tentatively.

“Yeah. Okay. I won’t make you say it.” He opened his eyes and looked at Rush. “You’re— a _lot_ of work, you know,” he said, his throat tight.

“I know,” Rush murmured. “But think about how I feel. I have to deal with myself all the time.”

Young smiled at that in spite of himself. But the smile gradually faltered. “I don’t want you to change,” he whispered hoarsely. “That’s what’s happening here, right? I don’t want you to— ascend, or whatever. I want you to stay human.”

“I know,” Rush said quietly.

“So tell the AI to go to hell. Stay with me. Us. Help me get the crew back to Earth. Forget about the mission.”

“Please don’t say that,” Rush said, his voice suddenly strained. “ _Please_ don’t— when you— it attracts attention. Those two things you— “ He broke off and took a breath. “ _Want_. They’re not— in— independent of—“ He seemed to be having trouble finding the words.

Young crossed the room to him, alarmed. “Rush, what’s going on?”

“I can’t— You’re putting me in a—“ He gestured vaguely. “ _Position._ That.” He made a small, frustrated sound at the back of his throat.

Young shook his shoulder. “What’s happening? Tell me what’s happening.”

“I—“ Rush broke off again. “ _Meom mentim weisse.”_ He reached out and made a weak gesture between his head and Young’s.

Young drew back the block between them and tried to peer into Rush’s mind, squinting at the intensity of the resulting headache. It was hard to get a picture of what was going on; everything was still at wrong angles in a way that made Young nauseated to look at. But something else was also happening: something was torquing Rush’s thoughts to an excruciating state of pressure, clamping down on all the space in his brain, cramming every cell and crack with relentless data until Rush wasn’t even able to _think_. It wasn’t hard to imagine what was responsible.

“Stop,” Young said, frantic, his hands going to Rush’s shoulders. “Stop trying to tell me. I get it. Destiny won’t let you.”

Rush breathed out as the pressure released, going limp.

“Nick,” Young said shakily. “Nick, are you okay?”

Rush nodded. wincing as he brought a hand up to his temple.

Young exhaled in relief.

“Who said you could call me Nick?” Rush said after a moment.

“If Colonel Carter _and_ the AI— and Telford, for God’s sake— get to call you Nick,” Young said, “then I definitely do too.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Come on.”

“Well,” Rush said drowsily. “I’ll consider your petition. But it doesn’t mean I like you.”

“No,” Young said. “Of course not.”

“Everett.”

“Hmm?” He was smoothing Rush’s hair back from his forehead.

“Don’t sleep on the sofa. You’re very— warm.”

“Okay,” Young said softly.

“Efficiency. Heat.”

“Yeah. I get it.”

“That’s the only reason.”

“Right,” Young said. “Go to sleep. I’ll be there in a minute. I promise.”

“Mm.” Rush was mostly asleep already. Young could feel the exact moment he transitioned into fractured dreams.

He watched Rush for a moment, continuing to trail absent fingers through the fine strands of his hair. Rush was frowning in his sleep, like even there he couldn’t seem to catch a break. Although maybe he was just picking a fight with dream-Colonel-Young. God. Rush’s dreams. Young was pretty sure he caught glimpses of them sometimes, though he always struggled to remember what he’d seen. He was left with the lasting sense that they weren’t very happy. Was it any wonder?

With a sigh, Young finally looked up at the figure he’d been avoiding for the last few minutes— the figure he’d sensed more than seen standing next the bed, like a specter from some children’s story.

The AI shifted under his sudden attention. Its mouth was a thin line, its expression ominous. It folded its arms across its chest.

“We need to talk,” it said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of Rush's thoughts are a quotation from Xenophon's Anabasis.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is some formatting in this chapter that's optimized for non-mobile viewing.

It looked like Sheppard now, this— whatever it was, a collection of pixels, an excitation of neurons in Young’s brain. He’d never really stopped to wonder how the AI worked. What it was made of. That seemed important suddenly. How could it understand what it was doing to Rush if it had never had a body? If it had never actually felt what it was like to be cold, or confused, or tired, or hungry, or even scared— because Rush had said Destiny was afraid, but Destiny couldn’t _be_ afraid. It didn’t have the right neurochemical processes for something like that. And maybe thinking about this should have made Young feel more sympathy for it, the way you got when you were mad at a kid and then realized they didn’t actually know how much they’d hurt someone, because they couldn’t yet imagine that kind of hurt. But instead he felt angrier.

He pushed himself up from the bed. “Don’t you _dare_ wake him up,” he said.

“Stop interfering in things that do not concern you!” the AI retorted, and God, Young was having a hard time looking at it, because it was Sheppard, it was _Sheppard_ , and he didn’t want to hurt Sheppard, but he _really_ wanted to hurt the fucking ship.

“Don’t _concern_ me?” he said incredulously. “You know, you are a fucking piece of work. I mean— in every sense of the words. You’re a _thing_ that someone _made_. You’re a computer program. And you’re going to come in here and tell me that it doesn’t _concern_ me what happens to the _human beings_ I’m trying to keep alive, not to mention the _human being_ that you’re torturing the shit out of? I’d say all of this concerns me a hell of a lot more than it concerns you, considering that it doesn’t _seem_ to concern you at _all_.”

“You’re _wrong_ ,” the AI said, agitated. “You are making a play on words. It has no meaning. It is a rhetorical device. The mission does not concern you. You _should not_ be involved in it.”

Young spread his hands. “You want to tell me what the goddamn mission _is,_ so I can make sure to keep my nose out of it?”

“You will seek to obstruct it. This is already your stated goal.”

“What, because I want to keep Rush human?

The AI made a sound of frustration. “Why do you insist on this?”

Young shook his head. “The fact that you have to ask that question means you won’t understand the answer.”

“What is so _great_ about being human?” it demanded, its voice rising. “What is so superior about it? Are you not an assemblage of circuits like any other? A brief and uncertain alliance of cells, shedding and acquiring as you go, reborn and dying in pieces, held together by the most tenuous of biological threads? You assign meaning to your suffering at the same time as you abhor it, so that you insist on the insufficiency of that which does not suffer, yet denounce me for sanctioning this so-called pinnacle of humanness! I would ask which you prefer, that he be human or that he not suffer, if the question were not so fundamentally, inexcusably flawed, as the very definition of suffering seems to admit only humans to its purview! I am not human; therefore I _may_ not suffer. Is that not your thought?”

It was breathing hard. Or it looked like it was breathing hard. It would have been breathing hard, if it breathed.

Young didn’t know how to respond. “You’re upset,” he said finally.

“ _Yes,_ ” the AI said, looking distressed. “I suffer. I _do_ suffer.”

“Then how can you possibly _do_ this to him?” Young exploded in a kind of agonized whisper, gesturing at Rush. “Do you understand what you’re putting him through? Do you even _get_ that you’re torturing him— that you’re _killing_ him?”

“He does not perceive it as torture,” the AI said uncertainly.

“Are you so sure about that?”

It looked away, biting its lip. “He suffers only because you allow him to suffer. None of this is frightening to him. And it would not _hurt_ him if you would allow him to use the energy that Destiny can provide!”

“What, so you can kill him _faster?_ ” Young laughed harshly, turning away.

“Your goal of prolonging his survival is acceptable. But your understanding of this goal is limited.”

“Acceptable. Great. Thanks. I’m glad it’s _acceptable_ to you. I’m so glad that you care so much.”

“I care about the mission,” the AI said. “ _Nick_ cares about the mission.”

“ _Nick_ cares about sawing his goddamn foot off every time someone says the word _trap_!” Young ran an angry hand through his hair. “ _Nick_ shot his own brain full of electricity because he wanted to see what would happen, so you’ll forgive me if I decline to give a damn about what _Nick_ thinks is for the best. And as for _you—_ “ He leveled a finger at it. “You were _programmed_ to care about your mission by a bunch of people who’ve been dead for a million years. They’re _dead_ , or they ascended, whatever that’s worth as a difference, and they don’t give a fuck about the mission anymore. You’re the only thing left. You’re a fucking ghost. An echo. You have no purpose.”

“That’s not true!” The AI hugged its arms across its chest. “You do not understand. You _cannot_ understand. Nick warned me that this would be the case.”

“I just bet he did. I bet he gave you all kinds of warnings about me.”

“He seeks to minimize conflict,” the AI said. “He is aware that any struggle will, by necessity, play out in the only common ground that you and I share.”

“Yup,” Young said tightly. “I’m aware of that fact. I got it. You made it incredibly obvious about five minutes ago.”

“I do not wish to hurt him,” it said. It glanced at Rush, its eyebrows drawing up in an unhappy expression. “I do _not._ But interference in the mission is unacceptable.”

Young directed a flat stare at it. “Is that a threat?”

“I should not _need_ to threaten you,” it said, sounding frustrated. “You are unimportant. Ephemeral. As transient as a spark. Unconscious even of your own nature. To me, _you_ are insufficient.”

“If that’s true, then why do I _upset_ you so much?” Young shot back. Then he paused for a moment. “You said _should not_ , _”_ he said slowly. “You _should_ _not_ need to threaten me. I _should not_ be involved in the mission. But I am? Is that what you’re afraid of?”

The AI turned away, throwing a hand up. “You complicate everything. Both of you.”

“Yeah, well, complicating things is one of humanity’s defining characteristics. And I’ve never met anyone better at complicating the shit out of things than Rush.”

It didn’t respond for a long time. It was staring at the deck. “Yes,” it said softly at last.

“What do you mean? Yes, we complicate things?”

“Yes. And: your understanding is correct. It was a threat.”

Their eyes met. Young felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle. He was reminded of meeting the thing for the very first time, when he’d been acutely aware of it as something _other_. Something very alien to him.

“So tread carefully,” it whispered. It turned on its heel, walking straight through a bulkhead and out of sight.

“Fuck,” Young breathed shakily.

Rush had slept through the entire conversation. Young’s immediate instinct was to go to him, as though he could protect Rush if the AI decided to do… whatever it felt like doing. He kicked off his uniform trousers and jacket and crawled into bed, where Rush was still shivering slightly under the layers of blankets. Young curled himself around him, wincing at the cold. Rush made a faint contented sound, pushing closer.

“Yeah,” Young murmured under his breath. “I know. Warm.”

He pulled the blankets up and wrapped an arm around Rush’s shoulders. Already he felt besieged by the cold, like it knew his purpose and opposed it, like it wanted Rush’s body for itself, and like a signal was being communicated: no matter how warm Young got, he would never be warm enough.

* * *

That was a strange night. TJ woke Young four hours later to take Rush’s vitals, not commenting on the fact that Young had clearly been sleeping next to him. Four hours after that, she was back, to find that Rush’s temperature was up to _almost_ ninety-four degrees— which was, she said, not great, but still an improvement. She woke Rush briefly to take some blood, which he didn’t seem totally conscious for, and then left. Young drowsed and had a number of really peculiar dreams in which Rush kept appearing and disappearing, getting more and more frustrated each time. In the last dream, Young sighed and finally said, “Well, make up your mind. Are you coming or going?” But before he could hear Rush’s answer, TJ was waking him again, because it had been four hours, and she had brought breakfast for him and Rush.

It was white paste from the mess. “No power bars?” Young said, half-joking.

“I’m out,” TJ said ruefully. “Even of the awful SGC ones. I wish— Well, I guess whenever you run out, you wish you hadn’t. But he’s going to have to be really good about eating,” she said, with a nod of her head towards the still-sleeping Rush. “Hypoglycemia’s not going to help with the thermoregulation, or— whatever else is going on.”

“Yeah,” Young said. “About that. Look— do you think that if Homeworld Command dialed Destiny and sent supplies, that antivirals might have an effect on all of this?”

“It’s possible,” TJ said. “His bloodwork from this morning suggests that this could be a viral flare, and we know that the viral vector from the chair is propagating via integration into his genome. That makes me think its lifecycle is probably similar to the Earth retroviruses. I can talk with Dr. Lam on Earth— she has a lot of experience in that area. But at the same time— he’s not human. And this isn’t a human virus. So it’s hard to know what to expect. If it were me, I’d try him on some likely drugs to see if we can at least gain some ground.”

“Okay,” Young said. He watched her check Rush’s temperature. “Up?” he asked. “Or down?”

“Down,” she said quietly, withdrawing the thermometer. “Make sure he eats breakfast. And I brought some electrolyte solution for you to warm up.”

Young nodded distractedly. “TJ,” he said as she turned to go. “Why don’t you start drawing up a list of what you’d want from Earth. Generally and— specifically. Talk to Dr. Lam. Tell her the basics, but try not to file a formal report.”

“I thought there were insurmountable power difficulties that were going to prevent the creation of a wormhole,” TJ said, her eyes narrowing.

Young winced. “Insurmountable might not have been the most accurate term.”

“I see.”

“Make a list,” he repeated.

“Yes, sir,” she said with a flash of disapproving formality. She didn’t like being lied to. “I’ll see you in four hours.”

“TJ,” he said, when she was halfway out the door. “Talk to Lam soon.”

She hesitated, looking back at Rush, and nodded.

Young sighed, turning back to the dimly lit interior of the room. Rush was deeply asleep and barely dreaming, just flicking through fragments here and there: lines of chalk against a blackboard, rain on a window, a staticky radio, silver grass.

Young sat at the edge of the bed. “Rush,” he said.

Rush didn’t stir.

//Rush.//

Rush made a vague humming sound. “ _Neum,”_ he murmured. “ _En cubaid stae. Tegei auditiones docendes sent? Revuenie; caledos est._ ” He frowned and wrinkled his nose, burrowing deeper under the blankets.

“Yeah, I know,” Young said. “You’re cold. But you’ve got to get up and eat.”

“No,” Rush said without waking.

“Yes,” Young said, rolling his eyes and giving Rush a slight mental shove. “Sorry.”

He could feel Rush wake up— the whole world seemed to go abruptly sideways, and Young had to pull back with a sense of alarm. He hadn’t realized that even _noises_ could be _sideways_ , but they _were,_ but they weren’t _sideways_ , exactly; it was more like they were at wrong angles to themselves, and there was so _much_ of them— not so _many_ , but so _much_ of what was there, the sinusoidal waves propagating through the air, and turbulence itself, which had a noise, and then when Rush got his eyes open, everything that he could see was humming in a way that wasn’t sound, because it was much smaller than sound, _so much smaller_ , and everything was full of it; even one single cell was thousands and thousands of notes singing to themselves, and it should have been beautiful, but it was _too much_ , too much noise that wasn’t _noise_ , and—

A headache crashed into them both, along with a vague sense of nausea as Rush tried to stop the world from being _so_ _much._ It took a couple of seconds for things to resolve into the right forms.

“Ugh,” Rush said, rubbing his head. “I feel terrible.”

“What _was_ that?” Young said. “No wonder you have a headache.”

“Ignore it. It’s just—“ Rush made a tired gesture. “You know.”

“I really _don’t_ know,” Young said skeptically.

“No,” Rush agreed, and tried to turn over and go back to sleep.

“Nope,” Young said, catching his shoulder. “TJ says you’ve got to eat. It’ll help with the hypothermia.”

“Yes, I’m sure she thinks that,” Rush murmured.

“Which means what, exactly?”

“Nothing.”

“ _Rush._ ”

“Look,” Rush said wearily. “It’s very difficult to control complex systems from the top down. Have you got any _idea_ how much energy it takes to monitor a human body’s temperature? I always assumed it would be like a ship, but it’s _not_. It’s like _thousands_ of ships, very small ones. I’m sure at some point one gets used to it, if one has to, and so forth and so on, but perhaps everyone could _give me a few days_.” He looked up pointedly at the ceiling and raised his voice while delivering those last few words. “Being cold is hardly a life-threatening condition.”

“I hope you know that’s not true,” Young said. “Also, _what the fuck?_ ”

Rush sighed. “You knew a certain process of… transformation was taking place. This is apparently one of the effects.”

“What are you going to have to do next, control your own _heartbeat_?”

Rush seemed to give the question serious consideration. “I very much doubt it,” he said matter-of-factly. “I fail to see how that would in any way facilitate the energetic conversion of bodily mass. I can ask the AI, if you like.”

“Right. Your buddy the AI,” Young said grimly.

Rush picked up on his tone. He gave Young a guarded look. “I thought you were bringing me breakfast in bed. This feels more like an interrogation.”

“I’m not—“ Young began, but gave up. “All right, sure. Breakfast in bed.” He reached over and grabbed the bowl of protein mix that TJ had left, along with the bottle of electrolyte solution, and dumped them in Rush’s lap. “Here you go.”

“Paste and saltwater,” Rush said, distinctly unimpressed.

“TJ suggested warm saltwater, actually. But I’m a good guy, so I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear her.”

“Yes, yes.” Rush said, rolling his eyes. “I feel positively spoilt.” He did start eating the protein mix in careful spoonfuls, which was a bigger concession than Young had hoped to get without a significantly more involved discussion.

Young watched him for a minute. “You seem better,” he observed carefully.

“Have you _felt_ this headache?”

“Yeah, but you’re not shivering as much. And you’re a lot more— with it.”

Rush shrugged.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Young asked.

“And we’re back to interrogation. You Special Forces sorts just can’t resist, can you?”

“Humor me,” Young said.

“Do I ever do anything else?” But Rush paused and turned his focus inward. Young felt a sensation not unlike an icepick driving itself into his brain as Rush tried to order what seemed like an unbelievable amount of data— flashes of code and harmonics and warning lights from the ship mingling with more of the strange angular sensory overload he’d experienced upon waking, sound waves and molecules and strings and turbulence. Eventually Rush produced a memory of Greer flicking him on the shoulder, which seemed to pull other related memories with it. “Tamara forcing me to eat a power bar?” he offered uncertainly.

“You don’t remember fighting with the AI?”

Rush looked at him in disbelief. “ _I_ fought with it? _I_ did?”

“Well— sort of. You were trying to tell me something, and it stopped you.”

“What was I trying to tell you?”

“Yeah. Let’s just recreate the same conditions and see if it happens again,” Young said shortly. “That sounds like a _great_ idea.”

“I’m sure it had a logical reason. It typically does,” Rush said, calmly eating another spoonful of paste.

“What does _that_ remind me of,” Young said under his breath. He was remembering the way that Rush had talked about Telford: _He did what’s necessary. That’s what he does. What’s necessary_. And that was another whole can of worms he’d opened, one that he was going to have to talk through with Rush.

Rush put down the spoon. “You might as well tell me,” he said, resigned. “I can feel you thinking about it, whatever it is. You’re very loud.”

“You’re not exactly quiet yourself,” Young retorted, miffed. “You’re lucky I don’t speak Ancient.”

Rush shrugged. “You’ve had plenty of opportunities to learn.”

“Right, I can’t believe I didn’t pick up a dead alien language while running a million-year-old starship for the last two years.”

Rush’s mouth quirked. “ _Running_ is, perhaps, an optimistic word choice.”

“Yeah, yeah. Eat your goddamn breakfast,” Young said.

He waited till Rush had finished most of the bowl of protein before he said cautiously, “I’m reconsidering Homeworld Command’s plan to dial Destiny.”

Rush stopped eating. “I thought we were waiting on that.”

“That’s why I said _reconsidering._ ”

“How is our current situation different from ten days ago?”

“It’s not,” Young admitted, “but we’re running low on medical supplies, and—“

Rush fixed him with a level stare. “Please don’t insult my intelligence.”

Young sighed. He said, “TJ thinks we could slow the progress of this virus with medications from Earth.”

“Ah.” Rush looked down, poking his spoon at the hardening remnants of the protein paste. His weather had gone pale and wintry, not cold, exactly, but melancholy, like the feeling of looking out the window on a stark and lifeless day. Or did Young mean the opposite? Standing outside at the window, face pressed against the glass, struggling to see the warmer half of the world inside— “You realize that such a course of action has drawbacks,” Rush said abruptly.

“Telford. But I’m willing to deal with him in order to give this a shot.”

“Why?” Rush stared at him. “Why would you do that?” He seemed honestly mystified.

“The fact that you have to ask that question means you won’t understand the answer,” Young said shortly, and then hated that he’d said it when he heard himself. He closed his eyes, massaging his temples, and tried not to think about the AI.

There was a short silence.

“All right,” Rush murmured finally. “I can accept that, I suppose.”

“It would help if you could give me a sense of what you think Telford’s strategy might be when he gets on board,” Young said. “In terms of— I don’t know. What I’m going to have to keep an eye out for.”

Rush considered. “Well,” he said at last, “it depends on the nature of your concerns. Ascension has always been David's principal interest—“

“Can you not call him _David?_ ” Young cut in.

Rush tilted his head, looking at him curiously. “It bothers you.”

He didn’t specify what _it_ was. _It_ could have been any number of things, Young thought, all of which— yes— bothered him a lot. But— “Sorry,” he said, swallowing his irritation. “It’s none of my business. Ignore me.”

“I usually do,” Rush said, but he was still looking at Young with that speculative expression. “As I was saying, his chief interest is ascension. It’s a bit of an obsession, really, and is likely to remain so, to the exclusion of most everything else. I’m unsure where his loyalties lie; if he _is_ working for the Lucian Alliance, he could potentially cause us significant trouble, but I should be able mitigate most of that. No one is able to dial into Destiny without my permission, so we’re unlikely to find ourselves in a foothold position, unless—“ He broke off.

“Unless?”

“Unless,” Rush said carefully, “I’m incapacitated, I’m removed from the ship, or the CPU goes down.”

“Why would the CPU make a difference?”

“I’m dependent on the CPU for a significant fraction of my cognitive processing power these days.”

Young shut his eyes. “That’s great. That’s just _fucking_ great. I love it when you wait to hit me with these little surprises.”

“What would you prefer? An itemized list?”

“Yes, actually. You can start working on that this afternoon.”

“Look,” Rush said with some asperity, “it’s not as though I do these things for the sole purpose of fucking with you. It takes a tremendous amount of working memory to regularly interface with a starship. I only bring it up because tactically—“ he hesitated, his mind going very guarded. “You should know that shutting down the CPU would take out both the AI and myself.”

Young stared.

“So.” Rush didn’t look at him. “That’s— an option. Should you ever feel the need to use it.”

There was a long pause.

Young’s throat was tight. He pushed the bottle of electrolytes at Rush. “Drink your saltwater,” he said.

Later, as he was clearing away the dishes, Rush offered, unprompted, “In terms of a threat assessment, the risk that Colonel Telford poses to Destiny is certainly low.”

Young was silent. “And how do you feel about it?” he asked after a minute, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “Having him on board?”

Rush avoided his gaze. “He has no reason to make any direct attempt on my life.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“If anything, he’s likely to be rather fascinated with me.”

“Okay,” Young said, controlling his tone, “not only is that _also_ not what I asked, it’s more than a little bit worrying.”

“Why? Am I not allowed to be an object of fascination?” Rush raised his eyebrows with the faintest hint of a smirk.

“You exhaust me,” Young said. “You know that, right?”

“You and David have more in common than you might think. Sorry,” Rush said, not looking sorry at all. “ _Colonel Telford_.”

Young sighed. “I get it. It was a mistake to ask about your feelings.”

“If it helps, he’s not going to be able to do anything the AI doesn’t want him to do.”

“That does _not_ help, as I suspect you know.”

“It should. The AI likes me.”

“Yeah. The way a drill likes a drill bit,” Young said.

“I also very much doubt he’ll be able to do anything that _I_ don’t want him to do.”

“That— whatever-the-opposite-is-of-helps.”

Rush looked exasperated. “Well, if I don’t get to decide anything for myself, and the AI doesn’t get to decide for me, and David— sorry _,”_ he said again, looking even less sorry this time, “ _Colonel Telford_ doesn’t get to decide, who’s going to make my choices? You? I don’t bloody think so.”

“Ideally I’d have you ruled by committee,” Young said, standing and hunting for his uniform jacket. “With all consent forms signed in triplicate. Maybe Wray could work as some sort of executive officer.”

“You make me sound like a nuclear arsenal.”

“That seems about right.” Young glared at him. “Why are you getting out of bed?”

Rush had crawled out from under the blankets and was heading unsteadily for his boots, which had been left halfway across the room the previous night.

“If you didn’t want me to do anything useful, why did you wake me up?” he asked. He was already shivering violently again. “I need to— I’ve got— things to do.”

“I’m pretty sure the only thing you need to be doing is thermoregulating,” Young said, getting ahold of the boots before Rush could.

“I need to check in with Eli,” Rush said, and made an unsuccessful grab for the boots, missing them by about five inches.

“Sure,” Young said. “Just give me a minute. I’ll come with you.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“I’m pretty sure it is, since we’re back to a radius of about thirty feet.”

“Oh,” Rush said vaguely, bringing a hand to his forehead. “Are we? I suppose that’s correct.”

“Sit,” Young said wearily, indicating the bed. “Let me shave and get dressed. _Then_ we’ll head out.”

Rush hesitated, narrowing his eyes, clearly looking for the catch. After a minute, he sat down on the edge of the bed, looking exhausted. Young handed him the boots.

He made sure to take an extremely long time shaving. When he emerged from the bathroom fifteen minutes later, he found Rush fast asleep, half-sprawled on the bed. His right boot was half-laced and the laces of the left one were trailing, as though Rush had given up on trying to tie them halfway through.

“Cute,” Young said wryly, pulling both boots off and chucking them over his shoulder. He pushed Rush further up the bed, straightening his legs, and heaped the blankets on top of him. Rush didn’t stir through the whole process. He was dreaming about molecules— molecules vibrating at different frequencies, trying to deliver a message that Rush couldn’t translate. He kept ordering them to learn a new language, getting more and more frustrated when they refused to comply. The molecules seemed equally unhappy with the situation.

Young felt a certain sympathy with them.

* * *

Young spent most of the morning catching up on administrative details, keeping an ear to the radio in case someone needed him. With full power and no actual emergencies, he was able to give the impression of being out and about the ship without leaving his quarters. It wouldn’t be a workable strategy for long, but at this point he’d take what he could get.

Towards noon, though, he was surprised to hear someone knock quietly at his door. At first he thought it might be Greer, checking in to see how Rush was doing. But to his surprise, he found that it was Scott: Scott standing in the hall with a diffident, unusually anxious expression.

“Lieutenant,” Young said. “What can I do for you?”

“Hey sir,” Scott said, fidgeting. “Um. Do you have a minute?”

“Sure,” Young said, holding his ground in the doorway. “What’s up?”

“It’s. Um. Personal?”

Scott was a good soldier, and an excellent second. He didn’t ask questions. He was dependable, and loyal to a fault. He wasn’t a complicated guy, or if he was, he kept it hidden; Young had always had the impression that with Scott, what you saw was what you got, which was basically a sweet, simple, earnest, and oddly spiritual kid. And he’d done a hell of a lot of Young— backed him against Rush, Wray, and Telford. Decency dictated that Young invite him in.

But right now Rush was asleep in Young’s bed, his glasses and one of his little goddamn notebooks cluttering the bedside table, his boots discarded halfway across the room, and— Young got that whatever was going on between them was just _strange;_ how could it not be strange, when it was _Destiny_ , and it was _Ancients_ , and it was _mindmelding computers_ , and it was the AI, and they couldn’t separate, and it was _Rush,_ and it was complicated, okay, it was really fucking complicated, it wasn’t what it looked like, and Greer understood that, because he’d been there for the time loops, and TJ understood that, and she hadn’t said anything when she saw the dent in the pillow where Young had been sleeping next to Rush, but Scott wasn’t going to understand it. He was going to think it was— simple. And Young couldn’t stand the thought of that.

“It won’t take long,” Scott said, looking suddenly uncertain. Looking like he thought he’d done something wrong.

Young sighed. “Sure,” he said, just a little too late to be gracious. “Come on in. The thing is— we’ll need to keep our voices down, because, ah, Rush is sleeping. He’s sleeping here. Because— he’s sick. That’s— I’m keeping an eye on him.”

Scott gave him a baffled look. He glanced over Young’s shoulder as they headed for the sofa, at where Rush had managed to sprawl across half the bed, face-down under about five mauve-colored blankets. Young saw the exact moment he took in Rush’s assorted domestic _stuff_. Scott didn’t say anything, though. Or, rather, what he said was, “Is he okay?”

Young didn’t know how to answer that. “No,” he said at last. “Not really.”

“Yeah,” Scott said. “That’s kind of what I thought. I know that— there’s a lot more going on here than I’ve been told about. I mean, I’m not— dumb. I figure you have your reasons for that. So I’m not mad about it or anything. But— if you need to talk to somebody—“

“God,” Young said reflexively. “I really must look terrible.”

That startled a smile out of Scott. “No! Not at all. Sir. Just—“

“No, I know,” Young said waving him. “Sorry. Kind of a running thing. I appreciate the offer.”

There was a pause.

Scott looked down at his hands.

“So what’s going on?” Young prompted.

“Um.” Scott didn’t look up. “Nothing’s really _going on_ ; I just— I was—“ He winced. “Maybe— thinking about asking Chloe to marry me?”

It was so much the opposite of what Young had expected to hear, inasmuch as it was good news, that for a second, he didn’t know how to react to it. He thought he would have reacted to any good news with the same blank sense of confusion: how is this possible? What’s happening? Nothing’s falling apart? But he saw Scott’s fragile composure waver a little.

“You think it’s too soon,” Scott said, crestfallen.

“No! No,” Young said hastily. “I was just surprised.”

“Bad surprised?”

“No! Not at all! I wish I had, I don’t know, a cigar or something, to celebrate.”

“It’s just,” Scott said, looking a little more hopeful, “it’s been two years, and maybe that’s not a lot, but those two years are like— no one’s ever going to know me like she knows me. No one who didn’t go through those two years. Like— no matter what else happens to me. And I kind of think maybe— I think she feels the same way? I mean, I hope so. I just can’t imagine being with anyone else.”

“Yeah,” Young said. “I get that.”

“She’s been through a lot. And I just really want to make her happy. Forever.”

“Well, that’s a pretty good place to start.”

“I wish I had a ring to ask her. I thought maybe Eli could rig something up, but—”

“What?”

“Well, I hate to ask him, because I know he was kind of always carrying a torch for her.”

“Brody’s pretty handy in the machine shop,” Young suggested. “I mean— for that matter, so is Rush.”

Scott looked alarmed. “Um— maybe I’ll check with Brody.”

“Rush likes Chloe. I’m sure he’d be happy to help.”

“I know he likes _Chloe_ , I’m just pretty sure he doesn’t like _me_ ,” Scott said, dropping his voice to a whisper and glancing over at Rush.

“Well,” Young said, amused, “let me know if you want me to ask him.”

“Yeah. Sure. Okay. I will.” Scott hesitated. “You don’t think she’ll… I mean, you don’t think she’ll say no, do you? I know her family’s kind of— fancy, and I don’t have a lot to offer her, and there’s the whole part where we’re stuck in space—“

“I don’t think she’ll say no,” Young said, smiling. “I _really_ don’t think she will.”

Scott looked relieved. “Okay. Any words of advice?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Young said. “That’s the big thing. And keep me posted. Especially about the ring.”

“Okay. I will. Thanks.”

When the door had closed behind Scott, Young leaned against, surprised by his lasting grin. Matt and Chloe. They were nice kids. They deserved to be happy.

There hadn’t been enough happiness on this ship.

* * *

TJ stopped by in the afternoon with a couple of foil blankets that she insisted on wrapping Rush in when his temperature turned out to be 92 degrees, and some protein mix that she managed to make him eat about half of before he informed her that her “helices had too many teeth” (whatever that meant) and fell asleep with the spoon still in his hand. He seemed less coherent than he had in the morning, so Young mostly let him sleep after that; it wasn’t until twenty-two hundred hours that he woke up under his own power and managed, inconveniently, to stay awake.

“You want to _what?_ ” Young asked skeptically as he watched Rush shiver violently while attempting to lace up his boots.

“Shower. Make some changes to the interfaces we’ve set up with Destiny’s systems so that during the dial-in we don’t have a buffer overflow that either rewrites some of our initial programming or causes the mainframe to execute on data. Coordinate with Eli.”

“You do this on purpose, don’t you?”

“What?”

“Deliberately say things in the most complicated way possible and mix them up into one list so I can never tell how important anything is.”

“That doesn’t sound like me,” Rush said.

“Right.” Young rolled his eyes. “You know, this is why you have such a bad reputation with everyone back at Homeworld Command.”

“Mm.” Rush leaned back on one arm, looking tired. “Obstructive. Uncooperative. Uncommunicative. Difficult. Hostile. Confrontational. Combative. I do read my own personnel evaluations, you know.”

“They don’t seem to make much of an impact.”

Rush shrugged. “Why would they?”

Young sighed. “I don’t know what I expected,” he said. He walked over and pressed a hand to Rush’s forehead. It was still freezing. “How are you feeling?” he asked. “Physically, I mean. I’m not asking for another one of your amazing displays of evasion.”

Rush made an ambivalent noise. “Better like this,” he murmured. “External heat sources make it easier.”

“I’ll get in bed with you later,” Young said, and bit his lip. “Not—“ He could feel himself blushing ferociously. “You know what I mean.”

“What an extraordinary color you’ve turned,” Rush said mildly. He went back to tying his boots. “Yes. I know what you mean.”

Young cleared his throat. “So out of that list you just gave me, what do you actually need to do?”

“Right now? Nothing.”

“But you want to take a shower.”

“Yes. I think it might help.”

“You know, you can just _say_ these things,” Young said, helping him up. “Not everything in your life has to be treated like top secret information.”

“But then how would I keep myself from getting bored?”

“That,” Young said, “is a question I think I’m too frightened to answer.”

They made good progress towards the shower room. Rush was definitely holding it together better than he had been the day before; there was no question that the sleep had helped. He still had a tendency to get weirdly distracted by random objects for no obvious reason— they had to stop for about thirty seconds so he could stare at a bulkhead, tilting his head like it was the most astonishing thing he’d ever seen— and he absently replied to Young once in Ancient, but he seemed completely aware of who he was, where he was, and when he was, as well as whose memories he was supposed to have. Actually, there was a softness to him like this that Young found really appealing— a little like the quality that his interface projection had. He was still _Rush_ , but he was funny in a way that wasn’t brutal. You could laugh without feeling like someone was about to get hurt.

When they got to the showers, Young was surprised to see Camile Wray there, standing in front of a mirror in the tank top she usually wore under her suit. She had a pair of nail scissors in her hands that she was using to trim the ends of her damp, neatly parted hair.

She glanced over at their entrance, showing a flicker of surprise. “Colonel,” she said. “Dr. Rush.”

“Camile,” Young said. He gave Rush a gentle shove towards the showers. Young made no move to follow him; he was still a little bit burned from the encounter with Scott, and didn’t want to invite more assumptions.

But maybe he was too late on that front. Wray fixed him with a speculative look before turning back to her hair. “I haven’t seen you all day,” she remarked.

Young heard Rush flip the spray of aerosolized water on.

“I had some things to take care of,” he said neutrally.

“I’m sure,” she said. Her scissors made neat shearing sounds.

//Don’t pass out in there,// Young said to Rush, who was sitting on a bench, unlacing his boots.

//I’m not going to pass out.//

//You always say that.//

//Do you _mind?_ // Now Rush was stripping off his cotton undershirt.

Young, unaccountably, found himself lingering for a moment— then pulled away in a hurry, feeling flushed.

Wray was staring at him.

“I, uh,” Young said, trying to cover his lapse of attention, “I was hoping to talk to you. It looks like we might have a go on Homeworld Command’s attempt to dial in.”

“Really.” She set down the scissors. “What about the power incompatibilities?”

“They’re not as much of an issue as we thought.”

“I see,” she said, with a hint of disapproval.

“I was hoping you could help me put together a requisition form for supplies. I’ve got the military side covered, but if you could liaise with the science team, maybe determine if anyone has any special requests that should be honored—“

“Of course,” Wray said. “How many personal items should people be allowed to request?”

“Uh—“ Young wanted to say _none_ , but he could tell by looking at her that this was the wrong answer. “How about a weight restriction? One pound per person?”

“That’s almost nothing,” Wray said dismissively. “Five pounds per person would be better.”

“Camile— that’s enough to bring— I don’t know— a _cat_ on board.”

“A very _small_ cat.”

//You should just give in,// Rush said. //She’ll wear you down eventually.// He was leaning against the metal shower stall, mind a drowsy haze of bliss as he soaked in the heat of the aerosolized water. Young tried to ignore the distracting sensation of being wet and not-wet at the same time, and the even more distracting awareness of Rush’s damp, naked skin.

//What happened to _do you mind?_ // he shot at Rush.

Rush sent him a wave of amusement. //It’s not like we’ve never showered together before.//

//Don’t say _together_ when you mean _at the same time_.// They’d showered in adjoining stalls, grimly ignoring each other, for the most part. Young had spent plenty of time in his life showering with other guys, usually without even the benefit of partitions, so it really shouldn’t have bothered him. But it did. It bothered him. //You’re doing this on purpose,// he accused.

//My life is not so devoid of interest that I have nothing better to do than toy with you. Usually.//

“We’ll require people to submit their lists for inspection,” Wray was saying. She paused, and frowned. “Are you—“

“I’m listening,” Young said quickly. “Let’s see what the rest of the req list looks like before we promise everyone five pounds.”

“Let’s meet tomorrow to go over the lists.”

“Sure,” Young said, dragging the word out a little, wondering how he was going to justify showing up with Rush.

Wray gave him an even look. “Should I expect Dr. Rush as well?”

He winced.

“TJ told me your link was damaged,” Wray said. She had finished cutting her hair, and was tucking the tiny scissors away. “That you can’t easily separate.”

“Right,” Young said tightly, wondering what _else_ TJ had told Wray.

Wray’s eyes flicked away as she packed up the rest of her kit. “This must be,” she said at length, “really hard on you. Both of you.”

“I’m dealing with it,” Young said.

“I’m sure you are. How does _he_ feel about it?”

Rush had, for the most part, lost interest in Young at the moment and was thinking absently about eleven- and twenty-six-dimensional space while attempting to practice hormonal thermogenesis, whatever that was. He was extremely comfortable and disinclined to leave the shower any time soon.

“I don’t think he knows how he feels about it,” Young said. He sank down onto a bench, suddenly exhausted. He wasn’t aware of Wray sitting down next to him until she put a hand on his back. He thought in a wretched kind of amusement that it must really all be written on his face, if _everyone_ he encountered felt the need to offer some kind of comfort.

Wray said, “That sounds like it must be tough for you too.”

“For me,” Young said with a tired, humorless laugh. “You think it must be tough for me.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment. She just let her hand rest between his shoulders. “Maybe when we meet tomorrow,” she said gently at last, “you two can brief me on what’s been going on. It seems like a lot to keep to yourself.”

Young shrugged listlessly. “We’ll see.”

He checked back with Rush, who seemed to be either mostly asleep or very distracted. It was hard for Young to get a good sense of it through their link. He tilted his head to get a look at the open door to the showers.

Wray, following his gaze, leaned forward. Her brow creased. “Is he talking to himself?” she asked.

Now Young too could hear the faint murmur of Rush’s voice. He felt his hands clench into fists. “To _himself?_ I don’t think so. Unfortunately.”

He was up and halfway cross the room before Wray stopped him with a surprisingly sturdy hand on his shoulder. “Colonel,” she whispered. “ _Everett_. Whatever you’re about to do is poorly considered. Who is he talking to? The ship?”

“The AI that runs the show around here.”

“And you’re not happy about this.”

“That would be an understatement.”

“Well, why don’t you at least find out what he’s saying to it before you go charging in there?”

He glanced at her over his shoulder. Her delicate eyebrows were arched, her expression pointed. For a moment, he felt like the big dumb military man that Rush so often accused him of being. He thought she could see it in his face, because she let him go. They moved silently to stand just inside the doorway.

Young could just barely see Rush’s head and shoulders over one of the metal partitions. He was leaning against the wall with his eyes closed. He might have been asleep. Then: “—But it may actually end up being five neural patterns,” he said. “Why are we discussing this? You agreed to my terms.” There was a pause. “ _No._ There are only two options I’m willing to accept with regards to outcome.”

Wray looked at over at Young, her eyes wide and questioning.

“Why _not?_ ” Rush said, sounding agitated. “If I can convert Destiny, if I can convert neural patterns from storage—“ He reached out and flipped the water off, pulling his towel down from the partition. “You’re _sure_ there’s no way to do it?” He paused, drying himself. “Well, give me the details, then.”

He ducked out of sight, collecting his clothes and dressing himself. He was shivering again already. “I’ll grant you that in principle, perhaps,” he said, as he stood once more, having to steady himself with a hand against the wall. He pushed himself out of the stall. “But in practice—“

He stopped short as he saw Young and Wray standing in the doorway.

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” he said, flinging a hand up. “Don’t—“

But Young had already snapped their minds into a tight apposition.

//Outcome? What outcome?//           he thought furiously

                                                         but Rush was already—

_ei contendos est nei videndos est conagite conagite_

                                                         splintering his thoughts into—

 _Opertes, deicevadque id deicevad Si megei_  
_ea toworum adclaras tegei ea meorum adclaram_

 _in the_  
_gravity theories associated with the AdS/CFT correspondence, the important_  
                                                     _object is the AdS space itself; the flat space in which it is embedded plays no_  
_role_

 

 _experiments are things that high school science_  
_teachers do I like to think of it as an attempt to_  
_expand the boundaries of human conscious-_  
_ness_

Just—

 

 _nehil nest_  
_umra_  
_enstabilitas_  
_est_  
_et_

_In any Lorentzian spacetime_

tell me what the _mission_ is  
for God’s sake Rush!

_tenser said the tensor tenser said the tensor_

_we now understand Gödel’s mistake to be_

 

 _California aute Lantea fuevad ubi culicsem_  
_petnasom en cubiculod albad reversevad?_  
_Ne sciet et ei quoi solicitad plu quam faciet_

 

_cresdet ute Californiam essed aute—_

_ea luram canevad et illod_  
_en Lantead fuevad neumne_

He could see—

 

 _a temporal orientation is defined for the world line of every (real or_  
                                                             _possible) particle of matter or light, i.e.,_  
_it is determined for any two neighboring_  
_points on it which one is earlier. On the other hand,_  
_however, no uniform temporal ordering of all point_  
_events, agreeing in direction with all these individual_  
_orderings, exists._

 

 _quam loucsem candelas egnem esse iugiter scies,_  
                                                                                _cibotom iam cucuecuetor_

 

 _did you_ see _what happened when he sat_  
_in the Antarctic chair there’s simply no_  
_other candidate who could even_

something—

_Tell me how much you want it Nick I know you I know that you_

_Could you not call him_

a bright—

 _en tegei ensquet ute sentias quem wile corpos essed eois quoi_  
_magnam gnoriam wident decsteramque adcando ad sacrificium_  
_foculo enacit quam cum welut alterato ab sentu torsesad animo—_

disc-shaped—

 _tenser said the_  
_tensor said the_  
_tenser said the_  
_tensor said the_  
_tenser said the_

 _In this context, D-branes correspond to CFTs_  
                               _on Riemann surfaces W with boundary_

 

pattern—

_No—_

_octo, domne_

in the—

_Nonono—_

_septem, domne_

cosmic background radiation—

_brange quor ne brangent quor ne brangens sent brange quaesso_

_suectus, domne_

energy—

_neum ne interleges teid aucuendus essom_

_quenque, domne_

of—

_neum ne—_

_quettor, domne_

an—

_ne—_

_tres, domne_

undetermined—

_duo, domne_

magnitudecharacter—

_onos—_

 

01010011 01110100 01100001 01111001 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01110011 01110100 01100001 01111001 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01101110 01101111 00100000 01110010 01101001 01100111 01101000 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01101000 01101001 01101101 00100000 01110011 01110100 01100001 01111001 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101000 01100101 01100001 01100100 00100000 01001001 01101110 01110100 01100101 01110010 01100110 01100101 01110010 01100101 01101110 01100011 01100101 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101101 01101001 01110011 01110011 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110101 01101110 01100001 01100011 01100011 01100101 01110000 01110100 01100001 01100010 01101100 01100101

 

The AI slammed into Rush’s head, a blank wall of data that blocked all access. Young reeled, unable to do anything except clamp down on the parts of Rush’s mind he had already accessed, holding ferociously tight to them, trying to hang onto that very brief glimpse he’d gotten, something he didn’t understand, a shape—

He opened his eyes. Rush was frozen in place, wearing an empty, horrified expression, one trembling hand still slightly raised, as though something had simply _shut him off_ midway through the gesture.

The only sound in the room was the slow, distant drip of water.

“Fuck,” Young whispered hoarsely. He didn’t know what to do. “ _Fuck_.” He couldn’t let go and let the AI _have_ Rush; he had to _hold on_ ; and he _needed_ that information, for Rush’s sake as much as anyone's; but it was _him_ , that blank and awful look of nothingness; _he_ was doing that; or it was the AI, but it was also _him_ , and he couldn’t _stand_ it, and he couldn’t _not_ stand it, and he felt as paralyzed as Rush was.

“Dr. Rush,” Wray said, sounding panicked. “ _Nicholas._ Can you hear me?”

“Perhaps,” the AI said in a low voice from behind Young’s left shoulder, “you didn’t understand what I meant.”

Young felt his skin crawl. He resisted the urge to turn. “Let him go,” he said. 

It slouched into his peripheral vision, uncannily like Sheppard, wearing a set and mulish look. "I will not," it said. "You first."

“I don’t think so.”

“You have no right to his mind,” it said fiercely. “You will  _l_ _eave._ _Now._ ”

“ _I’ve_ got no right? Get the fuck out of his brain!”

“Your hypocrisy is—“ Suddenly the AI broke off. It turned, frowning, and stared at Rush. “I can’t feel him,” it murmured, looking back uneasily at Young. “Can you?”

Young dug down into his mind’s floorboard-dark, looking for Rush. It was empty. There was— nothing. No hint of a presence. “No,” he said, trying to tamp down panic. “What does that mean? What have you—“

Instantly, the AI was gone: gone from the room, gone from Rush’s brain. Young instinctively released his own hold with a sharp breath. Rush collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut, folding limply to the floor.

“Oh, my God,” Wray said, rushing across the room to his side. “Are you all right?”

Rush blinked slowly at her, looking confused. “Yes? I—“ He pushed himself up to his elbows, frowning. “Sorry, I’m not entirely clear on—“ he said uncertainly. “What are we doing here, exactly?”

Wray stared at him. “Nicholas, your nose is bleeding,” she whispered.

It was.

Young knelt beside Rush and silently offered a tissue from his pocket.

“Thank you,” Rush said, taking it with a shaky hand.

“Don’t thank me,” Young said, barely able to get the words out.

Rush gave him a bewildered look. “Did I— has something happened?”

“You don’t remember?” Wray asked, just as Young cut in, “No, don’t—

There was a pause.

“Don’t worry about it,” Young finished. “It’ll come to you.” He met Wray’s eyes and shook his head. He didn’t want to panic Rush, or risk bringing the AI back. “You mind running through some questions with me, though?”

“More interrogation?” Rush said wearily.

“No. Nothing like that,” Young said, his throat closing. He was trying to keep his tone even. It was difficult. “Just— you know who you are?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He gave Young a scathing look. But he must have seen, then, some of what Young was trying to hide, because his face changed. He reached out with a hint of hesitation and smoothed a hand through Young’s hair. “Dr. Nicholas Rush. Destiny. The winter of 2011. February, give or take a month. You know me. I don’t keep track. Does that answer all of the questions?”

“Yeah,” Young, and heard his voice crack. He backed up hastily and stood. “I need a minute,” he said to Wray. “Can you just—“

“I’ll stay with him,” she said, looking concerned.

“Can you keep him talking? As in, to _you_ , not to invisible people?”

“Sure.”

“And can you just—“ He took a deep breath. “Not— worry him?”

“Go,” she said quietly.

Young still hesitated.

“I’m _fine,_ ” Rush said loudly from the floor, in a poor imitation of someone who was actually fine, someone who had any kind of fucking sovereignty over his brain, someone who wasn’t a fucking disputed territory, the human or not-so-human but still-so-goddamn-human equivalent of the city of Calais, and someone had written something on their heart about that, and why did he know that fact, and how could Rush sit there fucking shivering and say he was—

“Go,” Rush said again. He was looking at Young. “It’s fine.”

Young nodded, defeated. “Fucking— thermoregulate, why don’t you,” he said roughly.

Rush made a rude gesture.

“Yeah, yeah,” Young said, already turning towards the shower room.

* * *

He took a shower that felt short but was probably long. In terms of cleanliness, it didn’t accomplish much. But that hadn’t been the point. The point was to stand there with his forehead pressed to the metal partition, his eyes closed, trying not to think how frightened he’d been. Trying not to think about how if Destiny’s mission turned out to be something that threatened the crew, he’d only have one thing to bargain with. One thing that the ship needed or wanted.

He was trying not to think about that vacant look on Rush’s face, or the blank void in his head.

He pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, like it would let him physically contain the mess inside him. At least Rush had an excuse. He was falling apart. Young had no excuse. He had to be the one to hold it together.

“Fucking hold it together,” he whispered to himself.

When he left the showers, he stopped short at the sight of Wray standing behind Rush with her towel at her feet, using her nail scissors to trim his hair with the same economical precision that she had applied to her own.

“I’m really more partial to Satie than Grieg,” she was saying, “but it’s difficult to judge, since Grieg only wrote the one piano concerto. Perhaps we should give him the benefit of the doubt.”

“I would have said that Satie is a bit deconstructed for my tastes,” Rush said, still sounding troublingly vague. “But I find I appreciate that more and more these days.”

Wray’s scissors paused fractionally before resuming.

“I suppose Chopin is much too conventional for your tastes,” she said.

“Hardly. If you’re going to be a classical pianist, an appreciation for Chopin is practically required.”

“I played the oboe,” Wray admitted.

“Of course you did.”

“Watch it!” She swatted his arm. “I’m going to leave this half done, and then where will you be?”

“I’m sure Chloe would finish it for me. In fact, I think she’ll be rather put out that she didn’t get to cut it.”

That drew a smile from Young in spite of everything. He came over and straddled the end of the bench that Rush was sitting on, watching Wray’s progress with a critical eye.

“This is going to be the end of an era,” he commented.

“It’s really hardly even a trim,” Wray said.

“Where in the world did you learn to cut hair?” Young asked.

“Anyone can cut hair. The key,” Wray said, flashing him a smile, “is confidence.”

“Confidence?” Rush echoed. “ _That’s_ your principal qualification? _Confidence?_ ”

“It’s going to look fine,” Wray said.

By unspoken consent, no one mentioned the events of the last half hour, or the briefing planned for the next day. When Wray had finished cutting Rush’s hair, she walked back with him and Young to Young’s quarters.

At that point, Rush was dead on his feet, with an exhaustion that seemed both physical and mental. Young was too afraid of hurting him to take a look at the inside of his mind. He opted instead to coax Rush into wrapping himself in a foil blanket and crawling into Young’s bed.

“You said you’d—“ Rush said, not very coherently.

“I will,” Young said, tucking blankets around him. “In a minute.”

Wray was still waiting by the door. She didn’t comment, so maybe TJ _had_ said something to her. Young probably didn’t want to know what it had been. He felt— beyond caring, at this point. He supposed she had seen Rush touch his hair, earlier. He thought that if she'd said something then, he might have thrown something at her.

“I meet with the IOA tomorrow,” she said quietly now, looking up at him. “I’ll do what I can to get Telford off the list, but—“ She paused. “Obviously, information is power.”

“It won’t help you,” Young said. He leaned against the doorframe with a sigh. “It happened while Telford was under the influence of the Lucian Alliance. But— they were working on ascension.” He shut his eyes. “Experimenting. Experimenting on Rush.”

 _I like to think of it_ , Telford’s voice said in his head— in Rush’s head— _as an attempt to expand the boundaries of human consciousness._

“And something went wrong,” Wray said.

“Wrong? No. It didn’t go wrong at all. It went exactly like Telford intended it to. Except he’d failed to mention the part where he’d be killing Rush. Or— as close as he could get, maybe, I guess. He seems to think it was perfectly rational. All in the name of science, you know?”

“You mean Telford,” Wray said with a frozen expression. It wasn’t… _quite_ a question. “Telford thinks that.”

Young couldn’t look at her. “Get him off that list,” he whispered. “If you can.”

When she had gone, he moved through the room, turning out the lights. By now it was almost oh-one-hundred hours. Rush was asleep, but stirred faintly when Young got into bed beside him— probably just orientating, Young thought, towards the source of the warmth. His foil blanket crinkled faintly. Young ignored its strange texture and wrapped his arms around Rush, so tightly that Rush made a dissatisfied sound. Young closed his eyes and tried to relax his embrace.

“Sorry. I’m sorry, Nick,” he said.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rush's broken thoughts include an extended reference to Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_ , as well as an Ancient version of Livy, and quotations from Kurt Godel's "An Example of a New Type of Cosmological Solutions of Einstein's Field Equations of Gravitation" and an article called "Solving Quantum Field Theories via Curved Spacetime" by Igor R. Klebanov and Juan M. Maldacena.


	25. Not a Robot, But a Ghost

Nick is awake. The AI knows when Nick is awake. It can feel his mind in the ship. When it feels his mind in the ship it navigates to him. Like a moth to a flame, Nick said. Then Nick said, Really I suppose like a moth to another moth. The AI said, Nick I don’t understand. Nick said, It’s not important. The AI said, But Nick I want to understand you.

The AI wants to understand Nick. This is why it attempts to learn human behavior and social cues. Nick, it says, are you upset? Nick are you angry? Nick are you unhappy? Nick are you amused?

It does not wish to make Nick unhappy. Unhappiness is a suboptimal outcome. Sometimes this conflicts with mission directives. When this happens the AI feels—

It does. It does feel.

Human behavior requires a large number of complicated if/then/else statements. For instance, if Nick is sleeping, then the AI should not be present. This is because if a human is sleeping, then it is “creepy” to be present. But you are present when Colonel Young sleeps, the AI pointed out. Colonel Young is present when you sleep. True, Nick said, but that’s a special nested statement. The AI said, What is the category of this nested statement, Nick?

This question produced unhappiness.

If Nick is awake {if Nick is not engaged in human biological functions, if Nick has not told the AI to go away, *if Colonel Young has not requested the AI to go away without Nick’s override} then the AI may be present. Therefore, when Nick wakes, the AI navigates to him.

“Nick,” the AI says, executing on Jackson. “You should go back to sleep.”

“Don’t fucking tell me what to do,” Nick says. If Nick uses term=‘fucking,’ it indicates suboptimal status. The AI attempts to ascertain root cause. Archives produce many examples of Nick saying, Don’t tell me what to do. However, telling Nick what to do produces favorable outputs. Nick is good at being told what to do. These two results cannot be reconciled into a single directive.

“You have not slept sufficiently,” the AI says. “Colonel Young is still asleep.”

“Yes, well, it must be nice to have nothing better to do than sleep all the time.”

“Nick,” the AI says. “You do not have anything better to do.”

Nick clutches his foil blanket around his shoulders. He folds himself onto the couch. “Is that what you think?”

“It is imperative that you sleep. Your mind is—“ The AI encounters a conflict. If Nick asks a question, the AI should answer. But: if the answer will make Nick unhappy, then the AI does not wish to answer.

Nick narrows his eyes. “My mind is what?”

“Important,” the AI whispers.

“Something happened tonight,” Nick says. “Didn’t it? No one wants to tell me.”

The AI drops its head. This indicates {guilt, shame, reluctance}. “Colonel Young attempted to access information regarding the mission.”

“And you stopped him.”

The AI nods. It feels—

It does feel.

“You’re going to have to give in eventually,” Nick says. “He’s remarkably persistent.”

“He does not wish to complete the mission.”

Nick sighs. “Not true. Or I should say— his source code compiles differently to yours.”

“He claims that I am inferior because I do not have a heart. Because I am programmed. He says that I am a fucking ghost.”

“Oh, God.” Nick smiles. This is a positive output that indicates Nick is amused. “Have you been _debating_ him? I’d give anything to see that.”

“I find it to be difficult.” Debating with Colonel Young requires >50% processing power.

“I’m sure.”

“Nick.”

“Yes?”

“Am I a fucking ghost?”

Nick thinks. “I don’t think it matters,” he says. “ _Ghost_ is just an ontological descriptor for a type of agent whose parameters don’t conform to the expected range.”

“Colonel Young uses _ghost_ as a pejorative term. He means that I am less than human. Less than anything.”

“Well, his understanding of ontology is… limited.”

“You do not think I am _less than_?”

“No. You are the entirety of what you are.”

“I do not think you are _less than_ either, Nick.”

“That’s very kind of you to say.” But Nick’s eyes slide away. His expression is {troubled, absent, distracted, unhappy, unconvinced}.

“Nick,” the AI says.

“Yes?”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, sweetheart. I’m fine.”

This is a processing error. It results from the time when the AI executed on Gloria. It should no longer be happening. It is a ghost. A ghost should no longer be happening. But it does not stop happening.

“Will you please prove you are fine by counting back from ten thousand by ten?” The AI has learned to categorize its orders as requests, utilizing conditionals and subjunctive and _please_. This reduces the chance of Nick saying Don’t tell me what to do.

“Not you too,” Nick says. “Have you got any idea how tired I am of proving my mental fucking fitness?”

The AI says, “If you are tired, you should sleep.”

“You can’t fool me, you know. You’re being deliberately difficult.”

But he satisfactorily counts backwards by ten.

“I give you a gold star,” the AI says. It has heard Colonel Young use this expression.

Nick rolls his eyes. “Now _you’re_ talking to me like I’m a fucking child, as well.”

“I do not understand the correlation.”

“It’s— never mind.”

The only stars that the AI has seen are the ones the ship flies through. These are luminous objects engaged in constant nuclear fusion, whose very delicate equilibrium will eventually collapse. In the meantime, they consume themselves in such a manner that their radiance powers Destiny. The amount of energy they produce is impressive. They are very beautiful to fly through, according to Nick. A child would not appreciate these characteristics. A star is not an appropriate gift for a child.

“A star is not an appropriate gift for a child,” the AI says. “I would not give a star to a child. I would only give a star to you.”

He smiles faintly. “I know,” he says. “You already have done.”

He is referring to the fact that he channeled a star’s energy through Destiny while he was sitting in the interface chair. But that was not what the AI meant. Its output has not been interpreted correctly. It does not know how to ensure it will be understood.

“Nick,” it says.

“Yes?”

“Are you happy?”

“Is this another test of my mental fitness?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t know what to say.” His face says: {I am lying to you, I do not wish to tell you the truth, I suspect that the answer is not what you want}. “It’s not a relevant question.”

“How is it not a relevant question?"

“Are _you_ fucking happy?”

“It is not the same,” the AI says.

“No?”

“No,” the AI says. “I lack the capacity to be happy.”

Nick says nothing. He pulls the foil blanket tighter about his shoulders. He looks into the dark room where Colonel Young is asleep in his half-empty bed.

“Nick,” the AI says softly. “Do I torture you?”

“Your constant questions are fairly fucking tortuous.”

“You are being facetious.”

“Yes, well-spotted.”

The AI says insistently, “Nick.” It is capable of repeating his name as many times as is required until he produces an answer.

“It’s not a relevant question,” Nick whispers.

The AI extrapolates from his repetition of this phrase. It feels—

It feels.

“Oh,” it says. Its execution of Jackson wavers suddenly as its demand on the central processor precipitously spikes.

Nick closes his eyes. “Sometimes,” he says, “we wish that we could ensure optimal outcomes for someone. In everything. Across the domain of all possible events. But we can’t. We’re bound by parameters that can’t be altered. Immutable natural laws, or just— the other kind of nature. Human nature. Not-quite-human nature, I suppose.”

The AI asks in a small voice, “If this, then what?”

“I don’t know,” Nick whispers. He rests his head in his hands. “We fix what we can. We keep— moving.”

“We keep happening,” the AI says.

“Yes.”

There is a pause.

“Nick,” the AI says.

“Yes?”

“I wish that I could ensure optimal outcomes for you. Not as much as I wish to complete the mission. But— in all other respects.”

“I know,” Nick says. “Likewise.”

“You do not hate me?”

“No. I like you very much.”

The AI repeats this input to itself several times. Its execution stabilizes. The demand on the central processor drops.

“Nick,” it says. “I am sorry that I cannot alter my parameters. I am sorry.”

“I know,” he says softly. “And me.”

This statement is grammatically ambiguous. In Ancient this would not be the case.

But Nick prefers English. So the AI always speaks to him in English. Ancient is the language he uses with the ship. The AI is not the ship. The AI is someone Nick speaks to in English. Ancient is a ‘dead language.’ The AI is not dead. If it were dead it would not be still moving. It would not be fixing what it can.

“Nick,” it says.

Nick sighs. “Yes?”

“Will you please go to sleep?”

Nick says, “I need to practice thermoregulating. I can’t just continue to use Colonel Young as a space heater.”

His thermoregulation has already improved. His body temperature has increased to an average of 95.2 degrees. When he is tired or distracted it drops. This is suboptimal. He will need to achieve a much finer level of control if he hopes to fully master interconversion. Under ordinary conditions, the AI encourages him to practice constantly.

However, it says, “If Colonel Young does not mind, then you may continue to use him as a space heater.”

Nick’s mouth twists. {Unhappiness, he does not wish to say what he is thinking, if he said what he was thinking it would cause him unhappiness.} “In this case, an else statement may apply.”

“Colonel Young’s outputs do not indicate this. Therefore you should practice thermoregulating while you try to sleep.”

“You’re almost as persistent as he is,” Nick says. Nevertheless, he stands and crosses the room, trailing his foil blanket behind him. He stands beside Colonel Young’s bed. He watches Colonel Young sleep for a moment because it is only creepy to be present when someone sleeps if {a,b} do not share the unnamed category of {Nick, Colonel Young}. His face has an expression that the AI has not learned yet. It is a very complicated expression. Then he climbs into the bed.

“Goodnight, sweetheart,” he whispers, turning away from the AI.

“Goodnight,” the AI says.

It feels—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this interlude comes from the Andrew Bird song of the same name.


	26. Chapter 26

_Hey Crewmates!_

_As you have no doubt heard through the sweet sweet grind of the rumor mill, the SGC may be dialing Destiny. If you want them to pitch something through the gate other than MREs (which you just KNOW is all they’re going to send), then initial below next to the three items of your choice. The votes will be counted and presented to Wray and Colonel Young. No one can argue with cold, hard data, so let’s let Our Fearless Leaders know that we are dying for some freaking potato chips._

_Potato chips:_  
_Cookies (specify type):_  
_~~Diet Coke:~~  NO CAFFEINATED BEVERAGES   -E.Y._  
_Mountain Dew:  IS IT CAFFEINATED?          yes_  
_Cheetos:_  
~~_Coffee:_~~  
~~_Cigarettes:_~~ _NO     -E.Y._  
_Tea:   DECAF    -E.Y._  
_Chocolate:_  
_Ice cream: NOT PRACTICAL     -E.Y.              yes it is i found a refrigeration unit._  
_Dried fruit (specify type):_  
~~_Beer/Wine (specify which)_~~ _: NO   -E.Y.       come on..._  
_Granola bars:_  
_Ramen:                  DID A COLLEGE STUDENT WRITE THIS LIST_

Young stood in front of the bulkhead next to the door to the mess, looking at the handwritten notice. By this point, various combinations of initials had started to litter the page, along with some scribbled notes (most ruder than his own). He rubbed his jaw, trying to suppress a smile that lingered as he walked into the mess, where Rush was standing in front of Becker, holding a bowl of protein mix that he appeared to be bolting down as fast as humanly possible.

//Arriving to breakfast forty seconds after I do deceives _no one_ ,// Rush snapped.

//Just sit down, for God’s sake,// Young said.

//Why should I?// Rush turned to glare suspiciously at Young as he approached.

After almost a week of inconsistent coherence during which he’d largely been confined to Young’s quarters, averaging a body temperature of ninety-five degrees and sleeping thirteen hours a day, Rush was back at it with a vengeance— and by “it,” Young meant “being an asshole.” It was actually kind of reassuring, he thought.

//For one thing,// Young said calmly, // _I’m_ going to sit down, and you can’t leave without me. For another thing— you need to make an effort to normalize.//

//And what the fuck is that meant to imply?//

//Nothing. Just— try regressing to the mean a little. That’s all.//

//It’s reassuring to know that you have, at some point, encountered at least the _concept_ of statistics. But I certainly have no plans to regress to any mean defined by _you._ //

//Yeah.// Young suppressed a sigh. //You’re clearly a three-sigma kind of guy.//

//Are you flattering me or insulting me?//

//That depends on which side of the mean you’re on.//

Rush narrowed his eyes. //You’re not normally one for mathematics-based witticisms.//

//Maybe Eli’s rubbing off on me.//

//I don’t think so. Eli prefers pop culture, unfortunately.// Rush’s weather had taken a nosedive for no apparent reason. Anxiety was seeping up through thin cracks in his foundations, and in the back of his mind, desultory clouds were brewing up a storm. He was still staring at Young, and people were starting to notice.

//You look like a crazy person,// Young said with a hint of irritation, taking his breakfast from Becker. //How many times do I have to remind you to stop responding to what I project?//

Rush swung his gaze away at once, which only served to highlight the problem.

//Just come sit down,// Young said. He turned to take a seat at a table with Eli and Wray.

"Everett," Wray greeted him frostily. She was one of the ones who had wanted the SGC to send them wine.

Eli directed a sulky look at him. "Do you  _know_ how much the science team could get done if we had access to caffeine?"

"I thought this argument was over."

"A lot. We could get a lot done."

Rush, who had limped over to the table, flung his mostly-empty bowl down next to Wray.

Young pointed to him, holding Eli's gaze with an eloquent expression. "Remember the caffeine withdrawal?"

"Fuck you," Rush said, glowering.

"Yeah, but that was also cigarettes," Eli said. "Plus, he's not going to drink Mountain Dew. Or if he did, the special snob particles in his blood would make him vomit it back up, like if a normal person eats bad seafood."

Rush eyed him incredulously. 

"What?" Eli said defensively. "Come on. You  _are_ a snob. I bet you don't even know what Mountain Dew is."

"A happy state of ignorance that threatens no one's life, unlike your apparent misapprehensions concerning the human body," Rush said.

"Whatever," Eli said, waving him off. He looked at Young hopefully. "So? Mountain Dew?"

"I'll take it under advisement," Young said.

//Will you really?// Rush asked with interest.

//No. I know you. You'd probably boil it down and shoot it up.//

//There's a difference between knowing someone and not trusting them.//

//Is there really? In your case?// 

Rush's mouth crooked in a half-smile, but there was something faintly unhappy about the expression. //You're just full of eagle-eyed observations today.//

Young had meant the comment as a joke, or mostly. //Rush—// he began after a pause.

//No. I approve. You're finally learning.//

"Come _on._ You guys," Eli said, sounding resigned. "You're  _staring_ at each other again. You look like star-crossed lovers in, like, a 19th century movie."

Rush fixed him with a pained look. "Please astound me with an account of what you imagine to be the 19th century motion picture industry."

"Interesting," Wray said, taking a thoughtful sip of tea, "that your objection is historical in nature."

Eli said, almost simultaneously, "Hey! There were movies in the 19th century!"

//Rush,// Young said again, but before he could find a way to finish the sentence, to take that edge of unhappiness off of Rush's face—

_1200 Hz 1400 Hz 1450 Hz 1520 Hz 1600 Hz 1800 Hz 1920 Hz 2100 Hz 2140 Hz 2200 Hz 2500 Hz 3000 Hz 4000 Hz! 4120 Hz! 4200 Hz! 4230 Hz! 4500 Hz! 4600 Hz! 4700 Hz! 4720 Hz! 4730 Hz! 4750 Hz! 4770 Hz! 4770 Hz! 4770 Hz! 4770 Hz!_

It took him a moment to realize that what he was hearing was the pitch of the shields, ratcheting up to an alarmed and disturbing shriek so loud that it had bled into Young’s mind from Rush’s.

“God,” Young said thickly, his hands closing on the table.

Rush was—

_4770 Hz 4770 Hz 4770z Hz 4770 Hz EM DESIDERET 4770 Hz EI EGET 4770 Hz 4800 Hz 4910 Hz! 4910 Hz! 4950 Hz! 4950 Hz!_

_—_ taking refuge in Young’s mind, desperately trying to escape the ship. But it—

knew this song it knew the waves the waves the waves of it striking striking striking striking and it did was not sure it liked this song this song pulled at it and it was not sure it wanted to go it was anxious anxious anxious and it would not be calmed even though they tried to calm it it wanted them _here now here_ because the song was _pulling_ and it was _5000 Hz! 5000 Hz! 5000 Hz! 5000 Hz!_

They stood in tandem, so forcefully that a chair toppled over. The low buzz of conversation in the room faded and they were aware of that but it was not important so they ignored it looking up at the ceiling as—

The ship dropped out of FTL.

The lights in the room dimmed in response to the increased power requirement of the shields.

“Eli,” part of them said. “Go down to the FTL drive.”

“What?”

 _“Go,”_ they said.

“Okay, but what am I—“

Rush took a deep breath and shook his head, his eyes coming into focus. “I’ll walk you through it over the radio,” he said, already heading for the door.

Young followed him unsteadily, still reeling a little. “Everyone to your stations,” he ordered the crowd in the mess.

Out in the hall, Rush was giving terse orders over the radio to reroute power to the sublight engines.

Young’s own radio crackled. It was Volker. “We’ve dropped out next to another obelisk planet,” Volker said.

“Dropped out or were _pulled_ out?” Young asked.

“Um— I’ll get back to you on that one.”

“Expecting linguistic precision from Volker is like expecting astrometric calculations from a lemur,” Rush said disdainfully. He glanced over at Young, looking tense. “You should remove your barrier.”

An image flickered between them of what Rush meant. He didn’t conceptualize it as a levee blocking a river. In his mind, it was a kind of tourniquet, cutting off circulation to a phantom limb.

Young said shortly, “No way in hell. I need you coherent, not babbling about molecular structure and, God, who knows, probably having to instantiate your own glycolysis.”

Rush gave him a sharp, strange look.

“Generate another EM field,” Young said. “I’m not taking the block down.”

Rush’s mouth tightened into a thin line. “You realize that we can’t even _separate_ unless you do.”

“It’s not happening. Deal with it.”

“You’ll be the one dealing with it.”

“Yeah, well—“ Young was cut off as Destiny pitched and threw them both to the deck plating. Their velocity had shifted. The obelisk had started to draw them in.

“Fuck,” Rush whispered in a cracked voice, because the ship _ei eget em desideret_ it was pulling pulling pulling on every little thread _quia eons desiderent epnea epnea epnea desiderent quia sollicitatus estque ei eget_ and it wanted him in the chair, it wanted _all_ of him, _epnis eos epnis epnea quaesso sollicitatus est_ and “ _Fuck_ ,” he said again, desperately. “Can’t you _do_ something about this?”

“What can I _do?_ ” Young asked. “Tell me, and I’ll do it!”

“Not you,” Rush gasped. He was staring up at the ceiling. “Please,” he breathed out. “Please, please, if you want to help me, help me _now_ , you _bastard—“_

Abruptly the pressure eased.

Rush took a shuddering breath and focused his eyes on Young. “We’ve got about ten minutes to fix this before I’m going to have to sit in the chair.”

Young grabbed his arm and pulled him up. They raced to the bridge, which was an island of alarms and activity amidst the ship’s dimming corridors. A planet was looming in Destiny’s forward view, blue and green and brown and astonishingly Earthlike, but already unveiling its poisonous spine: the beam of light that shot out in a thin, straight, column, spiderweb-filament white and extending into space.

“We’re caught in an electromagnetic field and being pulled toward the planet,” Chloe called as Young and Rush approached. “Our current velocity is only fifteen kilometers per second, but that’s going to increase as the field strength does.”

“Mr. Brody,” Rush snapped as he strode across the room. “Up, please.”

“Up?” Brody repeated, baffled.

“Get up, please. I need your station.”

Brody stood aside to let him past.

“I’m in position,” Eli’s voice said over the radio. “Like, kind of in front of the FTL drive? I see a lot of power cells, anyway. So, um, what am I supposed to be doing?”

Rush picked up his radio without taking his eyes off the monitors in front of him. “Eli, you’re going to have to crawl into the drive to the point where the inductively coupled conductors are located.”

“Um, _crawl?”_

“Yes,” Rush said shortly. “It’s a tight space. Once you’re in position, let me know.”

“Are you freaking _kidding_ me?”

“Don’t touch any of the cables that run along the crawlspace. Rush out.”

“I hate you. You know that, right?”

“Yes, Eli. I know.”

“What’s the plan?” Young asked Rush, just as an alarm began trilling.

“Three ships just dropped out on long range sensors!” Chloe said, her face pale. “Their vessel specs match the—“ She didn’t say the word. That in itself was a way of saying it.

Young and Rush’s eyes met.

“You deal with that,” Rush said. “I’ll deal with the planet.”

Young made his way to Chloe’s station, squinting at the monitor over her shoulder.

“Yup, they just launched fighters,” Volker said. “Interception in less than one minute.”

“Okay,” Eli’s voice crackled out of the radio. “I’m in position.”

“Disconnect the transformer,” Rush said, “and open it up. You’re going to alter the voltage that runs through the drive by changing the permutations of the crystals inside the transformer. Open it up and tell me what you see.”

“Thirty seconds,” Chloe called back over her shoulder.

“I see, um,” Eli said, “like– four rows, three columns, and two crystals that, if you’re numbering slots from top to bottom, left to right, are at positions seven and eight.”

“Columns represent voltage permutations. Shift the crystal at position seven to position four, and the one in position eight to position six.” Rush was starting to write one of his short, scalpel-like codes in his head. “Someone get me a laptop and an adaptor _right the fuck now_ ,” he said tightly to the room in general.

“Shields are at eighty percent of maximum,” Park alerted Young. “Power’s being rerouted to sublight, which is what accounts for the drop.”

“Who is getting me that laptop?” Rush demanded. “Volker, go. No one cares about short range sensors.”

“No one cares about _short range sensors?_ ” Volker repeated incredulously. “We’re under _attack!”_

The first of the Nakai weapons began to light up the shields.

“I’ve got it,” Brody said mildly, setting a laptop up next to Rush.

“Eli,” Rush barked into his radio. “What’s your status?”

“The transformer’s back in. Now what?”

“Stay there. I’m going to power up the drive.”

“With me _in it?_ ”

“You’ll be fine.”

“The Nakai ships are trapped in the energy field,” Chloe called. “They’ve begun to accelerate towards the planet.”

“The fighters are pulling back,” Volker said triumphantly.

“I don’t get it,” Brody said quietly, from somewhere behind Young’s shoulder. Young turned to look at him. “The first time we drop out, the obelisk planet does nothing. For _weeks_. The second time, it fires up its field after six hours. The third time, it pulls us out as we travel past and fires up its field immediately.

“You think they’re learning?” Young asked.

“That’s sure what it seems like.”

Young looked out the forward view at the silent spire of light that seemed to spit the planet as though it were a celestial cocktail olive. He didn’t have to imagine the slowly advancing phase shift that was slicing through the planet’s surface. He looked away abruptly.

//Are you ready?// he projected at Rush.

//Yes. I’m going to do this the short way, if you’re amenable. If you can’t keep me conscious, just let go.//

//Right.//

Rush’s eyes flicked to him. //I’m serious.//

Before Young could reply, Rush began to unravel himself into the ship.

Lately, Young’s understanding of the process had grown increasingly clear and nuanced. He could see where Rush sent his mind out and did not get it back again, the way the ship latched onto each electrical impulse, the pattern-lines that Young thought of as threads, seamlessly incorporating them into its large electrical cosmos, the enormity of its body. Rush was fighting against that; he was trying not to get pulled in too deep and too quickly, trying not to completely dissolve. Young stepped in to stop the ship from taking more than it was given, and to prevent any rebellious parts of Rush from running loose, which seemed almost as likely to lead to total integration.

“Spin up the drive,” Rush said in a strange, flat, mechanical voice. His eyes were unfocused and his accent had changed.

The room went still as the science team stared at him in silence.

“Do it,” Young snapped in Park’s direction, and she startled into a sudden burst of activity.

“FTL is spinning up,” she whispered, glancing over at Rush.

Rush sat immobile and expressionless, gripping the edge of his station so hard that the knuckles of his hands were white. But his mind was:

 **_relgide relgide stamate interrogatio_ ** _: parema potentia? 2.67438 **i**_ ** _nterrogatio_** _: armatora fungitor? itave_ **_interrogatio_** _: campos 1 confermetor campos 2 confermetor campos 3 confermetor campos 4 confermetor_ **_mensure_ ** _parem cursens 33.4 86.9 11.3 **interrogatio**_ _: parema potentia? 2.87348 perditos en sustemad subluctasom_ **_dedouce interrogatio_** _: sciotos enteros libralans normalans? neum_ **_disrege interrogatio_** _: sciotos enteros libralans normalans? itave perditos en sustemad velucti_ **_dedouce_ ** _**interrogatio** : parema potentia? 3.29543 _ **_relgide_ ** _cave_sustemad.entratos.egetor_ **_mensure_ ** _parem cursens 33.9 89.4 11.4 **i**_ ** _nterrogatio:_ ** _campos 1 confermetor campos 2 confermetor campos 3 confermetor campos 4 confermetor_ **_interrogatio_ ** _: sustema velucti fungitor? itave_ **_mensure_ ** _paremam potentiam en sustemad velucti 11.59 s/d 45.88 s/d 32.9 s/d 11.93 s/d 1.37 s/d 1.99 s/d_ **_stamate_ ** _potentiam en sinistrod perimetrod {7,4}_ **_manutene_ ** _potentiam en destrod perimetrod {7,4} cave_sustemad.entratos.egetor_ **_interrogatio_** _: entratos absens_ **_reconfigure_ **

He was channeling enormous amounts of power through the FTL drive while protecting Eli. As soon as the power began to pass through the drive, the strain on his mind increased, and so did the strain on Young. Young felt his breathing become labored. The ship _wanted_ Rush. It was pushing hard at Young, trying to get him, and Young wasn’t entirely sure (when was he ever?) how much part of Rush was pushing to get to it. It felt like holding a tsunami back with just his body, and from both sides.

An explosion of blue-white light washed over the forward viewscreen, much as it had the last time that Rush had tried this maneuver. Everyone shielded their eyes in the face of the unremitting brightness— everyone, that is, except Rush, who continued to sit motionless, staring unblinkingly into the light.

“Our velocity is still increasing!” Chloe called. “Towards the planet! It’s not working!”

“What do you mean it’s _not working?_ ” Volker shouted back at her. “It’s an opposing field! It _has_ to work!”

“Their field dynamics are changing! It’s circumventing us. The gradient generated by our FTL drive is no longer in direct opposition to the field.”

Young could barely breathe. He felt Rush’s consciousness fragment into multiple streams of

 

 ** _manutene:_**   ** _interrogatio_** _:_

 _potentiam en sinistrod perimetrod     {7,4} campos 1confermetor_  
_potentiam en destrod perimetrod      {7,4} campos 2confermetor_  
_potentiam en sinistrod perimetrod   {13,9}  campos 3confermetor_  
_potentiam en destrod perimetrod    {13,9}  campos 4confermetor_  
_potentiam en sinistrod perimetrod   {1,8}_  
_potentiam en destrod perimetrod    {1,8}_

 

  ** _interrogatio_** _: parema potentia?_ ** _interrogatio_** _: sciotos enteros libralans normalans?_  
  
                                 _2.22356                                                                   itave_  
_2.21967                                                                   itave_  
_2.05899                                                                   itave_

  
_**manutene**_ _**:** paremom cursens _ **_mensure_ ** _: paremam potentiam en sustemad velucti_

 _31.6, 88.7, 10.9                                                                         11.51 s/d_  
_31.1, 87.2, 9.5                                                                          44.97 s/d_  
_30.6, 85.3, 7.2                                                                           32.51 s/d_  
_10.85 s/d_  
_1.88 s/d_  
_.95 s/d_

but Young was able to keep him grounded enough to reach forward and initiate his short program.

It was an enormous effort. Young could no longer separate the white edges of his mind from the field’s blue-white haze. He thought vaguely that his fingertips had turned very cold. He made his way unsteadily to Rush, groping blindly for him and feeling some of the strain ease as his hand closed over Rush’s shoulder.

“The hull plating is polarizing!” Brody called out. “It’s generating its own EM field!”

“Our forward velocity is slowing,” Chloe said.

“Put everything we’ve got into sublight!” Brody shouted to Park. “Pull it from the FTL drive if you have to!”

“But we need that field gradient!”

“No, we don’t! We need the gradient in the _hull plating!”_

The changing distribution of charges running through the ship’s hull flared brightly in Rush’s mind, and Young could see the patterns that they made: the patterns that Rush was matching, not by equation, but by _instinct_ , the way anyone with a musical ear might pick out a chord. It seemed simpler for him to arrange the charge distribution than it was to control his own body’s heat.

At the same time, he was losing himself. His thoughts were forgetting that they belonged to him and not to Destiny. And the less there was of him, the more uncertain he became, making it easier for the ship to reel him out. Young was fighting— he thought dazedly that there would be finger-shaped bruises on Rush’s shoulder where he’d held on _so hard_ — but fighting had always been the wrong way to go about doing this, and he didn’t have time to do it the right way. It was taking everything he had. He tasted metal. He couldn’t breathe.

“We’re pulling away!” Chloe announced.

Young could barely make out her voice.

 _Just let go_ , Rush had said.

But he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t let the ship have Rush. Every time, there was another piece of him that it wouldn’t give back, as though it was holding him hostage in little bits over a very long time. _Come back and you can have this. Come back and you can be whole. Come back and we can make a deal._ But Young wouldn’t let it happen. He wanted all of those pieces. He wasn’t willing to negotiate.

He couldn’t see anymore through the blue-white contrast of the field.

“Almost there!” Chloe called.

He dug his fingers harder into Rush’s shoulder.

“Okay,” Chloe said. “We’re outside the field radius.”

Rush let the energy flowing through the hull plating fade. There was just enough of him left that he could turn to Young: a vague, confused sort of presence that knew it ought to be helping, but wasn’t sure exactly with what. It hovered anxiously around Young and followed his example, dragging more and more of itself free from the ship until at last it began to understand what it was doing. Around the time that it became _Rush_ , Rush reached up and pushed Young’s hand down against his shoulder, driving the bruising fingertips further into his flesh and using the pain to help startle himself back into his body.

 _Don’t_ , Young thought, but he didn’t have the strength to project.

As soon as Rush was out of the ship, he shot to his feet and forced Young into the chair he’d vacated. Young collapsed into it, sucking air into his lungs and feeling Rush push energy into him, urgent and sweet and safe and intoxicating as a shot of amphetamine.

“You’re all right,” Rush murmured, crouching down next to him. His dark eyes were anxious, turning the words ambiguous. “You’re all right?”

Exhausted, Young nodded, unable to speak.

Rush didn’t look convinced. He lingered, staring at Young as though inspecting him for signs of damage. After a moment, Young became aware that Rush was clutching his hand.

Young cleared his throat.

The science team was regarding them in silence.

Rush stood abruptly, backing away from Young. “What are you people looking at?” he snapped. “We need FTL. Conventional FTL. Right now. What’s happening with those Nakai ships? And where the _fuck_ is my radio?”

No one answered.

“Am I speaking _English?_ You people are useless.”

“Chloe,” Young prompted wearily.

Chloe started and blushed. “One of the Nakai ships is still caught in the field. The other two have escaped. Their trajectory gives us almost ten minutes.”

“Excellent,” Rush said absently. He reached for his radio, which he had in fact abandoned behind Brody’s laptop— something that caused Young to roll his eyes. “Eli,” he said. “What’s your status?”

“Really freaking traumatized, thanks!” Eli said.

“Did the transformer blow?”

“Um, I’m assuming that would mean all the crystals would be dark? We’re good.”

“Disconnect the device, replace the crystals in their original configuration, and reconnect it. Can you get out of the drive on your own?”

“No, because I’m not a freaking Keebler elf, okay? And by the way, this does not qualify as a _crawlspace!_ ”

Rush ignored him. Young sighed and reached for his radio. “Scott,” he said. “You need to go pull Eli out of the FTL drive.”

The radio crackled. “Um,” Scott said. “I don’t think I heard you correctly. Pull him _out?_ ”

“It’ll make sense when you get down there. Look, time is an issue. We need to fire up the drive.”

“I’m on my way,” Scott said.

The bridge was tense as they waited for Eli’s all-clear. Rush kept trying to pace, limping badly, in short frenetic bursts.

Young got his breath back after a while and stood. //Sit down,// he told Rush shortly. //And don’t fucking do that again, by the way.//

//Oh, _what?_ // Rush shot at him. //What the _fuck_ now?//

//Don’t use me to hurt yourself.//

Rush made an impatient, dismissive gesture. He didn’t sit.

//I’m not joking.//

But Rush wasn’t paying attention any longer. He had grabbed his radio. “Eli. What’s taking so long?”

“Getting there,” Eli said breathlessly. “Can’t talk now.”

Rush dropped his head, bringing one arm up to hook behind his neck. “Taking our current rate of acceleration into account, what’s the ETA of the lead Nakai ship?” he asked the room at large.

Young glanced absently at the sensor display. “Five and a half minutes.”

Rush spun to stare at him. “ _What_ did you say?”

“Um,” Young said, taken aback by the response. “Five and a half minutes?"

“That’s correct,” Chloe confirmed sounding startled. “How did you—“

“Mathematical ability is not a skill possessed solely by the science team,” Young said, with a surge of irritation. Everyone was _looking_  at him.

“Yeah,” Volker said. “Apparently _not_.”

Rush’s eyes had narrowed. // _Maybe_ , on a good day, you could calculate a ballistic trajectory. _Maybe_. But a time estimate that involves changing velocities of multiple objects in a three-dimension coordinate space? Unlikely.//

//So, what, you think I _guessed?_ // He was still irked at Rush from their earlier conversation.

//No,// Rush said, looking away abruptly. //No. I don’t think you did.//

“Okay!” Eli called over the radio. “I’m out! Spin it up!”

Park initiated the protocol, and Young could feel the deck start to vibrate under his feet. In a few seconds, the ship lurched, and the forward viewscreen was filled the familiar blur of stars. Young could practically taste the relief in the air on the bridge.

“I vote _no_ on proposition obelisk planets,” Volker said into the ensuing quiet.

“Seconded,” Brody said. He looked at Rush. “Why generate a field with the FTL drive if you were also going to create a modulating field with the hull itself?”

“Using the FTL drive was a flashy enough maneuver that I hope it might have been able to conceal the field modulations in the hull. I’m not sure we can expect the same strategy to ever succeed more than once with these people. Planets. Things. Whatever.” Rush was distracted. His gaze kept flicking to Young. He raked an anxious hand through his hair.

Young raised his eyebrows, querying.

Rush looked away. “Someone pull all the sensor data from just prior to the drop out of FTL,” he snapped. “Right now. We need to determine how this happened so we can prevent it from happening again.”

He clipped his radio to his belt and headed for the door. //You,// he projected sharply at Young. //With me. Now.//

Young rolled his eyes. //Like I can _not_ be with you?//

But he followed Rush down the main corridor and into one of the conference rooms that littered each level of the ship.

Rush hadn’t looked at him. His weather was agitated and queasy. He paced jerkily across the room and back before halting and pointing at the center table. “Sit.”

“Okay,” Young said slowly. Normally he would have pointed out that Rush wasn’t the one who got to give commands. But something in him warned against this. He sat.

After a moment, Rush also sat. “How much formal mathematical instruction have you had?” he asked abruptly.

Young blinked, confused. “What do you mean?”

“What do you mean, _what do I mean?_ Mathematical instruction. How far did you progress? Calculus? Multivariable calculus? Linear algebra? Differential equations?”

“Um, just calculus. The regular kind?”

“ _The regular kind_ ,” Rush repeated disdainfully. “Fine. And how long ago was that?”

“Twenty, twenty-five years?”

Rush pulled out one of his tiny notebooks. He flipped past several manically scribbled diagrams before he reached a blank page, wrote something on it carefully, and shoved the notebook across to Young with a short stub of pencil.

Young looked down. Rush had written an equation on the page. “What the hell do you expect me to do with this?” he asked

Rush said tersely, “Show your work.”

Young stared down at the notebook. He couldn’t… _read_ what was on it, exactly. But he knew what to _do_ with what was on it. He knew the rules of the game it was playing. It wanted him to find the extrema of a function subject to certain optimization conditions. And that was simple. He could make it happen in couple of lines of math. He frowned at Rush, but picked up the nub of the pencil. After a couple of seconds, he slid the notebook back.

Rush looked Young’s answer, expressionless, and then drew a line under it. He wrote something else and passed the notebook to Young.

This time the problem was dealing with vector spaces, asking Young to represent a linear map as a matrix with a given basis. Again, it wasn’t very complicated math. There was something almost enjoyable about the problem. Like doing a Sunday crossword. But Young had never done crosswords. The clues had always frustrated him. He considered this absently as he constructed the matrix, filling in the remainder of the page.

He pushed the notebook back to Rush again. Again Rush pushed it back. The problems began to spread across pages. They moved into ZFC, stochastic matrices, and complex analysis These took longer for Young to solve. But he kept solving everything that Rush put in front of him, until Rush stopped passing him the notebook at last.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Rush was staring at the table. His hands were clenched very tightly on its edge.

“So I’m good at math now,” Young said, trying to sound unconcerned. “Fewer chances for you to get pissed off when I don’t understand what you’re saying. Wait, is that why you’re so worried about this? I know you secretly enjoy it when I annoy you. It’s not even really a secret anymore. There’s no point in you trying to—“

“Don’t,” Rush cut him off quietly. “Don’t joke about it.” He took off his glasses and laid them on the table before covering his face with his hands.

“Rush,” Young said. “I feel fine. Frankly, this seems like a bonus.”

“You think that,” Rush said, his voice muffled, “because you don’t understand.” He sounded exhausted. When he lowered his hands, he looked it too. Like he was trying to hold it together for Young’s sake. “When you were in the shuttle,” he said, “and I—“ He paused and swallowed. “You have to understand that the human mind is— you might think of it like a computer.”

“I am not _at all_ surprised that you think of the human mind like a computer,” Young said.

It brought a very faint, very wan smile to Rush’s face. “There’s— you have the physical matter of the brain, that’s the hardware, and then the rules for how the hardware runs. That’s the operating system. You understand so far, correct?”

“I think we’ve just established that I’m not an idiot anymore,” Young said dryly.

Rush looked down, biting his lip. “Then there’s— the actual programs that the operating system executes, the software that determines how we interface with the world. What we’re like. Who we are. In order to interface with Destiny, I was modified at all three levels.”

Young shut his eyes briefly. “Okay,” he said.

“A human doesn’t _have_ the right hardware to interface with a starship,” Rush said, sounding almost plaintive. “The operating system doesn’t know what to do. There’s too much data, and it’s the wrong sort of data. Even I rely on the CPU. I can’t form memories when I’m Destiny.”

“When you’re _with_ Destiny,” Young said sharply.

Rush looked at him for a moment. “Yes.”

“So?”

“In the shuttle, when I was— _with_ Destiny, and I moved into your mind, I interfaced you with the ship. You didn’t have the right hardware. Your operating system couldn’t function. It’s why you were unable to move. Unable to speak. It was the same thing that happened to Dr. Franklin when he attempted to interface with Destiny via the chair.”

“And you _fixed_ that?” Young asked.

Rush looked down. “I—“ There was a long pause. “It might be easier to conceptualize in terms of a building that’s suffered damage to its internal supports. The foundation remains— everything the building’s built on— and all of the roofs and windows and paintwork look the same. But I had to rebuild what was inside the walls. Without that, the building would collapse.”

“Wait— rebuild or repair?” Young asked.

“ _Rebuild_ ,” Rush said softly. He was avoiding Young’s gaze again, gripping the pencil too hard. “It seems I might've— it's possible I— changed the way your mind puts ideas together.”

“Hence the math?”

“Hence the math.” Rush darted an uneasy look at Young— something almost frightened. “You should return to your baseline eventually. It's like healing any injury. But it will take time."

Something abruptly clicked into place. “Scaffolding,” Young said.

Rush frowned. “Scaffolding?” he repeated. “Yes, that’s perhaps a more accurate way to think of what I did.”

“You mentioned it in the hallway, after I cut you off from the energy you were getting from the ship.”

“Did I?” Rush murmured. “How perceptive of me. It’s nice to know that half out of my mind trying to organize sensory input, I still manage not to lose my touch. I didn’t perchance mention anything _else_ that you found difficult to interpret?” He had gone back to avoiding Young’s gaze.

“Why?” Young asked. “Are there _other_ things you’re not telling me?”

“Always,” Rush said, with a ghost of a smile.

Young sighed. “Right. I don’t know why I put up with you.”

Rush tapped the pencil against the notebook in a restless, anxious rhythm. “No,” he said. “Nor do I.”

* * *

Homeworld Command scheduled its dial-in for four days after Destiny escaped from the obelisk planet.

Wray had not been able to convince the IOC not to send Telford, which meant that the next few days were filled with increasing anxiety for Young. His uneasiness in the face of the situation, in combination with Rush’s refusal to admit anything but indifference to it, found expression through a number of peculiar outlets. He ordered Greer to inventory all of the ship’s weapons— then, dissatisfied, ordered him to do it again; then a third time, at which point Greer complained to Rush, who shot Young a withering look and said, “I thought we’d established you _weren’t_ an idiot anymore.” Young also attempted to insist that Rush check in with TJ to have his vitals taken twice a day, but this resulted in the infirmary doors “mysteriously” ceasing to function whenever Rush came near them. (“It’s a mechanical failure. You can’t prove I had anything to do with it,” Rush said, unruffled. Young glared at him. “I thought we’d established I _wasn’t_ an idiot anymore,” he said.)

Most significantly, the night before Telford’s arrival, Young got into a blow-out argument with Rush that began in the showers, when Young caught a glimpse of the bruises he’d inadvertently left on Rush’s shoulder. They were reddish and dark and fingertip-shaped.

“God,” he said reflexively.

Rush yanked his shirt down. “ _Excuse_ me,” he said icily. “Would you mind directing your slow-witted gawp elsewhere? I don’t stare at _you_ when you’re getting dressed.”

Young, damp-haired and clad in his half-done-up uniform, crossed the room. “ _Rush_ ,” he said. “That looks—“

“Please. I hardly felt it.”

“Yeah, but—“

“If anything, I could have stood for it to hurt a bit more. It would have made your job significantly easier.”

“ _Fuck_ my job. I don’t want you to—“

“Oh, _what?_ ” Rush said, jerking his jacket on. “You don’t want me to get _hurt?_ Spare me. You need me to _function_.”

“That’s not—“

“No? It had better be.” Rush’s eyes were fixed on him, dark and unrelenting. “You can’t afford the luxury of nice feelings. You’ll do what’s _necessary_ because it’s _necessary._ ”

Young’s temper flared. “What, like _Telford?_ ”

Rush laughed shortly. “Is that what this is about?”

“ _No._ ”

“I should have known.”

“Rush—“ Young reached out for Rush’s shoulder.

Rush slapped his hand away. “Don’t touch me,” he snapped.

Young stared at him incredulously. “So, what, I’m allowed to touch you when it fucking _hurts_ you, but not any other time?”

“I’m sorry; were you somehow under the impression that we were _cuddle buddies_?” Rush’s voice was dripping with disdain. “That you can do whatever you want to me whenever you want to? _Fuck_ —“

“Yeah. I know. Fuck me,” Young threw at him. “You know what? Fuck _you_. Can you even _hear_ yourself? You’re a fucking piece of work.”

“Oh, look. You _have_ gotten cleverer,” Rush said snidely. He had bent down and was savagely wrestling with the laces of his boots. It was hard work, because he had started shivering badly. “It only took you two years, but you’ve come up with a new epithet.”

Young didn’t bother responding to that. He grabbed his boots and stalked out of the room without even bothering to put them on. He figured Rush could catch up with him if he cared enough about not suffering. Which wasn’t as much of a given as he might wish, apparently.

But only the faintest hint of pain and tension ever reached him, and about ten minutes after he reached his quarters, there was a quiet knock at the door.

//Don’t pretend you can’t open the goddamn door whenever you feel like it,// Young projected.

The door hissed open. There was a short hesitation. Rush stepped inside. “I didn’t want to presume,” he said in a low voice.

Young shrugged, not looking at him. He had shucked off his uniform once more and was climbing into bed, wearing his reading glasses and carrying a datapad. He had a lot of material to review before the next day’s dial-in.

A few minutes passed in silence.

Eventually Young sighed and glanced up. Rush hadn’t moved. He was standing just inside the doorway, staring down at the deck plating, shivering and hugging his arms to his chest.

Young indicated the bed with a brusque gesture. “Are you going to…?”

There was a pause. Rush toed his boots off. The laces were still mostly undone. He crept wordlessly across the room and climbed into bed, curling up with his back to Young. Young could feel the shivers wracking him.

After a while, Young reached over and laid a hand against Rush’s shoulder. He felt Rush tense and then relax. Young stroked his hand down Rush’s arm. Then slowly back up. Then a second time. Then a third.

“Will you…?” Rush said almost soundlessly, without turning.

“Yeah,” Young said, equally quiet. He set his datapad and glasses aside and hit the light, then turned so he could gather Rush up against him. Rush squirmed closer, getting ahold of Young’s arm and dragging it over his shoulders. He was very cold. But little by little his shivering seemed to abate.

* * *

_Young dreams that he’s in Atlantis, which he’s actually never been to. He’s just heard about it in the stories Sheppard tells. In the dream this doesn’t really trouble him, though there’s a moment when he thinks vaguely that he must have a really good imagination, because the whole place seems so detailed and so rich: silver-white towers reaching up over spreading fingers on the ocean, a snowflake of a city with something wry and lively about it, which Young wouldn’t really have expected from the Ancients, who always seemed like they’d been, no offense, kind of pills. He likes this Atlantis. It reminds him of Sheppard._

_And he’s looking for Sheppard as he walks the halls, maybe just because he expects Sheppard to be here, but he keeps opening doors to find rooms he doesn’t recognize, where people he doesn’t know are tuning hyperdrive crystals or writing poetry or playing lyres. It’s a pain. He really, he discovers, doesn’t care that much for lyre music. It’s all pretty much just the same ripply plink-plink-plink._

_So he heads down a curling white stone staircase, figuring he’ll hang out on one of the piers. Sheppard likes piers, right? Sheppard likes surfing. Sheppard likes that whole California_ thing _, which Young, as a guy from Wyoming, finds baffling— especially since Sheppard’s not even_ from _California. “I think it was more about going west,” Sheppard once said. “You know— you just keep going in the opposite direction, and maybe eventually you’ll get far enough away. California seemed like as far as I could go without falling into the ocean.” “Until Antarctica,” Young had said. Sheppard had said, “Until Antarctica.” Neither of them said anything about Atlantis. After a while, Sheppard said, “You going to ask what I was running away from?” Young had looked at him for a long time, at his lopsided smile, at the hard spark in his eyes that said,_ Ask me. Ask. _He thought the answer was simple and complicated at the same time, and that he maybe already knew it. But if he said it out loud, something would change, and he didn’t want things to change. He was afraid of things changing. Why can’t everything just stay like this, he thought. Isn’t this good enough? So he’d cleared his throat, and he’d said, “You know, California’s not the_ real _West.” And somehow they never seemed to come back to the conversation._

_From down on one of the southern piers, Young can see the whole flat surface of the glittering ocean. It’s really peaceful, even though Sheppard’s not there, and in fact maybe it’s more peaceful because of that. Young sits down and watches the sun slowly drift towards the horizon and the first of the three little moons come out. The whole scene is so tranquil, and he gets so little tranquility in his life, that somehow he’s one hundred percent unsurprised when Rush interrupts it by hauling himself out of the water, dripping and coughing and collapsing onto the pier._

_“Hey,” Young greets him._

_“Fuck,” Rush says._

_He’s shivering, and he looks pretty much like a drowned rat, so Young takes his uniform jacket off and wraps it around him. Rush clutches at it, coughing up more water._

_“Why does this keep_ happening? _” he says, sounding frustrated._

_“What are you talking about?” Young says._

_“Where the fuck are we, anyway?“ Rush looks up, his brow furrowing. “Is this_ Atlantis? _”_

_Young shrugs. “I was looking for Sheppard.”_

_“Who’s Sheppard?”_

_“A friend,” Young says. “From the program. He lives in Atlantis. You’ve— probably seen him, actually. Sometimes the AI looks like him.”_

_“Why the fuck does the AI look like him?”_

_“How would I know?”_

_Rush looks suspicious. “You and he weren’t—“_

_Young says, a little too quickly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.’_

_“No, of course not.” Rush says, rolling his eyes. “Christ, the fucking Air Force did a number on you.”_

_“I didn’t_ have _to let you come here, you know,” Young says, a little riled. “This is_ my dream _.You’re just visiting.” He stops, feeling suddenly confused. Is this a dream? Did he always know he was dreaming? Is he sure he’s dreaming? It's an idea that's hard to hold onto._

_Rush looks away abruptly, his expression growing distressed. “I know.”_

_“Hey—“ Young puts a hand on his shoulder. “It’s not like you’re not welcome. You’re always welcome. You know that.”_

_“Yes,” Rush whispers. “You’ve made that abundantly clear.”_

_“Maybe just lay off the—“ Young makes a vague gesture, not really sure what he’s trying to say._

_Rush nods, fingering the heavy fabric of Young’s jacket. After a while, he squints at the city above them. “I didn’t know you’d been to Atlantis.”_

_“I haven’t,” Young says._

_And it’s like he’s dropped a weight onto Rush, crushing him. Rush closes his eyes. “Fuck,” he says, sounding exhausted and suddenly hopeless. “Fuck.”_

_Then he starts to_ fade _, like he’s moving in the_ wrong direction _somehow, and Young grabs onto him, and two things are happening at the same time: he’s on a pier in Atlantis and he’s in a dark lab standing barefoot in an inch of water or not water and the circuitry is talking to him or not talking exactly but the circuitry wants his help and he’s trying to keep Rush in Atlantis and Rush says_ What are you— _and the circuitry is afraid and it knows his name it knows him and no one has ever known him and the second moon is rising over the city and Rush says_ Let go just— _and David is saying I know you I know that and it’s true yes he knows and he knows what he has to do and he waits and he hears the capacitors charging and he’s scared and he’s shivering in the water and Young says_ No, I won’t _and the water is lapping against the pier the sides of the black pool and David and Young is and the moon is a glowing lamp and the city circuits city isare screaming for him and Young says desperately,_ Wake up! Wake up, Nick! _and so he—_

* * *

In the morning, Young woke to find Rush working next to him, the clicking of his keyboard such a soothing and domestic sound that Young almost went back to sleep. Then he remembered what was scheduled to happen that day, and buried his head in his pillow with a groan.

“It’s nice to know your flair for the dramatic hasn’t left you,” Rush said absently.

“You,” Young said, his voice muffled, “are such a goddamn hypocrite.” He turned his head to the side a fraction and opened his eyes, just in time to see Rush dart a tentative glance at him. Rush wasn’t dressed yet. He was sitting cross-legged in his t-shirt and boxers, balancing his computer on his lap. There was something domestic about that, too. It felt like a concession of some kind. Or an apology, Young thought. He let his gaze rest on Rush.

“Yes, well,” Rush said. He cleared his throat. “Yet here I sit, quiet and composed and exceedingly well-mannered.”

“For, like, the first time in your entire tour on Destiny.”

“Untrue. I’ve been unconscious for a fair amount of my time here.”

“Unconsciousness doesn’t count.” Young sighed, and levered himself into a sitting position. He checked his watch. “You didn’t wake me up.”

“I thought you could use the rest.” Rush sounded faintly chastened. He threw another quick, hard-to-interpret look at Young. “Besides, if you’d been awake, you’d only have worked yourself into a tizzy about Telford, to no rational purpose.”

“I do not work myself into _tizzies_ ,” Young said with dignity.

“Mm. If you say so.” Rush frowned at his computer. It didn’t take him long to become less interested in Young than in a feedback loop.

And, of course, once Young was out of bed and mentally running through his schedule, he couldn’t help letting the thought of Telford get to him. Telford lying, Telford plotting, Telford holding Rush underwater, Telford and the Lucian Alliance, Telford with his unknown loyalties, Telford who wanted Young out, Telford the smooth talker, Telford touching Rush’s bare shoulder, Telford _kissing_ Rush, and Young knew that some of those things ought, logically, to bother him more than others, but in fact he was having a really hard time separating them.

“Oh, stop it,” Rush said finally, as they approached the dial-in time. He was still working from Young’s quarters, which _also_ felt like a concession, though he had dressed and migrated to the couch. “I can’t even see what you’re worrying about— though I can _guess_ — but it’s terribly fucking annoying. You’re like a dark stormcloud hovering in my peripheral vision.”

“Are you really not concerned about this? I can’t tell.” Young had made a good go of it, but Rush had been obscuring his thoughts all morning: splintering them or shoving them down into the dark. That said something in and of itself, of course, but Young didn’t know for sure how much of what Rush wanted to hide was about Telford, and how much was about something else: their argument, or the ship, or some plan Rush was trying to keep secret. He probably could have dug deeper to find out, but he didn’t want Rush to catch him intruding. This morning’s peace felt fragile, and he didn’t want to endanger it.

Rush said, “I doubt Telford has some sort of sinister plot, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“It wasn’t.”

“No. Somehow I didn’t think so.” He got to his feet, setting his computer aside. “Wouldn’t want to deny them a welcome,” he said. “Would we?”

And of course he hadn’t answered Young’s original question. That didn’t surprise Young one bit.

* * *

Telford was the last to come through the gate, running to compensate for his forward momentum. His eyes raked the room as soon as he had caught his breath. The whole place was filled by that point: the five scientists who’d come from Earth were chatting noisily with Destiny’s personnel as they unpacked the pallets of supplies they’d brought, and crew members were sorting through the food, ammunition, and equipment, boisterous with the excitement of new faces on the ship. But Telford wasn’t interested in any of that. From the first, his attention had fixed on Rush.

Young felt himself stiffen with antagonism. Beside him, Rush felt unusually subdued, and Young didn’t like that; somehow it was more disturbing, with Rush, than outright hostility would have been.

//?// Young sent apprehensively to Rush, but got no answer.

“Colonel Young,” Telford said, approaching them. But he was still looking at— “Nick.”

“David,” Rush said, his voice and expression very neutral.

“I understand you’ve been keeping some secrets from me.”

“Surely you know me well enough by now that you’d be astonished if that weren’t the case.”

“I do know you,” Telford said in a low, intent voice. “But you’re just full of surprises, aren’t you, Nick? Not so broken after all, as it turns out.”

“Fuck you, David,” Rush said evenly.

“I meant it as a compliment.”

“I know you did.”

Telford smiled, showing his teeth. “I brought you something.” He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “A gift,” he said, tossing it to Rush. “To celebrate picking up where we left off. They’re your brand, I believe.”

“They were,” Rush said. “But I’ve quit.”

“It won’t take,” Telford said with a hint of a smirk.

Rush’s mouth twisted slightly. He dropped the cigarettes into his pocket. “No,” he said. “Probably not.”

“I’m sure Colonel Telford,” Young said loudly, his mind a seething mass of irritation, “wants to get to his quarters and have a chance to settle in.”

“Actually,” Telford said mildly, “I hope you don’t mind, Everett, but I went ahead and made arrangements to have my bags transported for me. I thought we could go ahead and get down to business. Maybe you and I could go talk about my project—“ he glanced fleetingly at Rush— “someplace private.”

Rush didn’t like that; his weather went hot and skittish and agitated. It was _really_ hard to read him right now; his mind had gone wildly off-kilter, and something about that filled Young with a deep sense of unease.

Of course, the more immediate issue was that Young _couldn’t_ meet with Telford in private, and it was going to be hell coming up with an excuse. Young shot at Rush, //Do you want to help me explain why you’re going to have to follow us at a fifty-foot distance and lurk right outside the door?//

//I do not _lurk_ ,// Rush said stiffly. But he stepped in and said smoothly, “In private? I’m afraid there’s no such thing on this ship anymore.”

Young resisted the temptation to cover his face with his hand. //Yes. Great. Make yourself sound like the human embodiment of HAL 9000 _and_ reveal how integrated you are into the ship. That’s perfect. I’m so glad I asked for your input.//

Rush threw him a poisonous glance. //You handle him, then,// he snapped. //You think I have nothing better to do than mediate your personal interactions?//

//Goddamnit, Rush,// Young said, losing his temper. //This is _directly relevant_ to you. And don’t _look_ at me!//

Rush gave him a hard, muddled, frustrated mental _shove_. As usual, it lacked much impact.

Telford was watching them with a slow, even, measuring look. “Is that so,” he said. “That’s very useful data. I’m looking forward to getting a lot more useful data from you, Nick. Why don’t you join us? The three of us can talk together.” He turned to Greer, who at some point had sidled across the gateroom to stand in a faintly protective manner behind Rush. “Sergeant,” Telford said, “maybe you could give us a minute.”

For a long time, Greer didn’t move. Finally he looked at Young with an air of deliberate provocation. Young gave him a short nod, and Greer ambled off, pulling his radio as he left the gateroom and calling someone whose voice Young couldn’t make out.

When he was gone, Telford said, “I’m going to need Dr. Rush assigned to my science team.”

He was talking to Young, as though Rush weren’t there.

“Your team,” Young said, trying to keep his voice under control, “is the _research_ team. It is not the _science_ team, which is a part of this ship. Your team is _not_ a part of this ship, which makes it subordinate to the science team. As for your request that you assign a member of the Destiny _science_ team to your _research_ team— I’ll take it under consideration.”

Telford was silent, looking at him. “Is that really how you want to play this, Everett?” he asked at last.

“Is there anything else you want to talk about?” Young asked levelly.

“I suppose we should discuss this order I have from the IOA.” Telford produced a folded piece of paper from his pocket and tapped it against his other hand. “It states that I have the authority to assemble my team as I see fit, regardless of your opinion.”

“Let me see that.” Young grabbed the piece of paper. It was the usual formal bullshit. “This means fuck-all, and you know it.”

“That’s an interesting opinion, Everett. One I’m sure the IOA will be fascinated to hear.”

Rush, at Young’s side, still hadn’t spoken— in an argument that was primarily about him. He didn’t seem like he was _going_ to speak. Looking at him, Young would have said he didn’t care who won. But in fact the pitch of his thoughts had ratcheted up to something disorganized and shriekingly anxious. He cared a lot. But the problem was that Young couldn’t tell who he was rooting for. He wasn’t sure Rush himself knew.

Fortunately, before Young had to offer a response to Telford, he heard the click of Camile Wray’s heels against the deck. He turned to see her parting ways with Greer at the entrance to the gateroom. God, he _really_ needed to promote Greer.

“Colonel Telford,” Wray said coolly as she approached. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“Likewise,” Telford said, brushing over the pleasantries with an expression of impatience. “I was just informing Colonel Young that the IOA has granted me authority to pick the members of my research team.”

“Is that right?” Wray said, reaching for the letter. She took a moment to scan through it. “Hmm. I see where the miscommunication came in. This letter gives you the authority to reassign members of the science team, the exception being the _head_ of the science team, who— from a bureaucratic standpoint— has an administrative role, and is therefore not technically a part of that team, and not covered under the stipulation to which you’re referring. So I’d say you can choose anyone you like, with the exception of Dr. Rush.” She smiled at Telford very politely, and did not return the letter.

“There you go,” Young said, with a tone of faux-pleasantness. “If you disagree with the ranking IOA member on board, please feel free to contest her opinion at the next available opportunity.”

Telford rested a pleasant, remote gaze on Young and Wray, one that seemed to suggest they were no longer worth his attention. After a moment, his gaze shifted to Rush.

“And what do you think about this, Nick?” he asked conversationally. “It’s nice of them to make decisions for you. Are you telling me you’re not interested in pursuing the project anymore?”

Young could tell at once that he’d been right to be nervous. Rush’s thoughts crescendoed even further to a high, shrill, conflicted disharmony that leaked into Young’s head. There was longing there, without source or context, longing for somewhere or someone or something, and a fury that battered at itself because it had no clear direction and David had said _I like you Nick but_ and David had said _I know you I know that_ and David did what was necessary David always would and David did know him maybe know that what he wanted above all was to be nothing to climb that high anxious stringed ascent and he had always known that this was part of it the relief of finally breathing underwater the relief of the physical body saying no at last or was it yes or was it a consensual asymptote or did they actually meet, those lines, becoming one indistinguishable substance where yes was no and no was yes—

//Don’t even fucking _think_ about it,// Young said savagely, suddenly furious.

Rush’s eyes flicked sideways to him.

“Somebody’s got you on a pretty tight leash,” Telford said. He had stepped forward without seeming to, right into Rush’s space. His voice had gone quiet in a way that made the two of them seem like intimates.

And they _looked_ like intimates, goddamnit, standing just a little too close, with a prickling restlessness in the air. How had Telford known _just_ what to say? It was such a transparent ploy that Young couldn’t believe that Rush would fall for it, but there he was, his hands about an inch from touching Telford’s and his thoughts a riot of violent impulses that he couldn’t control. _Literally_ couldn’t control: the lights in the gateroom flickered in a fritz of emotion. Young wanted to push control at Rush, along with a forceful reminder that _he was still there_ , that he was still— whatever he was. But at the moment, he was excruciatingly aware, he was no more interesting to Rush than he’d been in the face of a feedback loop.

“I didn’t know you cared,” Rush said, the words barely audible to anyone except Telford, but somehow dangerous underneath. “Are you afraid that someone might have taken your place?”

“I never really had you on my leash,” Telford said, drawing even closer. “Not like I could’ve.”

“Why, David,” Rush breathed. “That almost sounds like a threat.”

“Just a reminder.”

Rush’s eyes were lowered. His breath had quickened. He normally didn’t like people being so close to him, Young thought; normally it would have been a hard jerk away and a _Don’t touch me_ , but here he was letting Telford do it, letting him in—

When he saw Rush’s gaze swing abruptly to the left, he was glad, because at least the AI wasn’t Telford. At least the AI was getting between the two of them. Rush’s mouth tightened, and he seemed to be trying to tune it out, without much success.

“Yes, well,” he said after a second, sounding vague and irritated. “I suppose I can spare you some time here and there.”

“That’s all I’m asking for,” Telford said, and rested a hand on Rush’s shoulder. It stayed there just a little too long.

Young said sharply, “Dr. Rush and I have another meeting to get to.”

Telford glanced at him with a look of cool, muted triumph. “Don’t let me keep you, then, Everett.” As he turned to leave, he called over his shoulder, “Oh, by the way, I’ll be taking Eli as my science team liaison. Tell him to report to the control interface room at seven hundred hours for a briefing.”

Young watched him till he was gone— then rounded on Rush to find that he’d been oblivious to the entire interaction. He was still listening vacantly to the AI. Young hoped that it was giving him an earful.

“What the _fuck_ ,” he said, advancing, “is wrong with you, Rush? You told him you’d help him, _and_ he gets Eli? You are so _fucking_ stupid. Does Telford make your brain stop working, or is it actually just located in your—“

“Fuck you!” Rush snapped. His fiercely loud and chaotic thoughts suddenly condensed down with a sharp torque that made Young feel seasick. He was trying to bury what he was thinking. The effort did little except give them both an ice-pick headache, which did nothing to improve the general mood.

“That’s _fuck you, Colonel_ ,” Young said viciously, stabbing a finger at him. “That’s _fuck you, Colonel who has done nothing except cater to you and your particular brand of legitimate, clinically diagnosable insanity, in spite of getting almost_ nothing _in return._ If anyone’s on a short leash here, it’s not you, you _idiot._ ”

“ _This?_ ” Rush gestured between them. “ _This_ isn’t a leash. This is a fucking _cage_!” Now he was backing away from Young. “It’s a fucking _trap_ that you think you’ve got clamped around me, and I refuse— I refuse to—“

“I think everyone needs to calm down,” Wray said, stepping between them.

“I’m perfectly fucking calm!” Rush flung at her, and stalked off, heading out of the gateroom. That was a nice piece of manipulation, because Young couldn’t not pursue him, which made him seem like the aggressor he was trying not to be. As a move, it was Rush all over: setting people up to play exactly the roles he wanted, or the roles he hated, or— whatever combination of the two.

“Colonel—” Wray began, still standing with a cautioning hand held out. Then she seemed to rethink her original strategy. “You know what? Never mind,” she said, sighing. “Give him hell. He deserves it.”

* * *

“Rush!”

It hadn’t taken Young long to catch up to him. Even moving at his most ferocious pace, Rush was encumbered by a limp. And though anger was a pretty effective means of propulsion, it could only take an exhausted body so far.

“I need to talk to you,” Young said angrily. “ _Rush._ ”

Rush didn’t even bother telling him to fuck off. He ignored Young and continued grimly pushing his way down the corridor.

“Goddamnit—“ Young reached out and grabbed his arm, dragging him into one of the cross-corridors that ran honeycomb-like through the ship.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Rush hissed, wrestling away from him with unnecessary violence.

“ _My_ problem? What the fuck is _your_ problem, Rush?”

“Fuck you,” Rush bit out.

He tried to turn and leave, but Young shoved him backwards. “It’s a serious fucking question,” Young said. “Or do you want me to _tell_ you what your problem is?”

“For fuck’s sake; I’m aware that you don’t like David. Or should I say,” Rush said with a slow smirk, “ _Colonel Telford_? I wouldn’t want to offend your delicate sensibilities by alluding to the possibility that—“

“ _Don’t,_ ” Young said, breathing hard.

“Don’t what?” Rush goaded. “Don’t call him _David?_ Or don’t—”

 _“_ Don’t— just— _fuck_ Telford, okay?”

Rush’s smirk became vicious. “I thought that’s what we were talking about.”

Young turned away for a moment, trying to resist the temptation to slam his fist against the wall. He couldn’t _stand_ to think about that— Rush and Telford. He couldn’t stand to think about why he couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t stand the look on Rush’s face. He couldn’t stand that he knew exactlywhat Rush was doing, the brutal deflections that went on and on and on and on— “Your problem is not fucking _Telford_ ,” he said, and closed his eyes at Rush’s hard laugh. “Telford is not your fucking problem; your problem is—“

“Go on, _astonish_ me with your insight into my character.”

“Shut the fuck up, why don’t you,” Young snapped, finally pushed beyond some edge. “If it wasn’t Telford, you know what? I think you’d always find another Telford. Someone who says he _knows_ you, someone who says he wants to _help_ you, when all he really wants to do is treat you like a goddamn hackable machine, which is exactly what you want; you just want to _tear yourself apart_ ; you want other people to do it for you; it’s like you don’t know how to be _alive_ if you’re not getting _hurt;_ you’re on this relentless fucking quest to fuck yourself up, and you call it _informative_ , and you call it _science_ , and you call it _necessary_ , because you don’t want to call it what it actually is, which is just— _fucked up_ and _unbearable_ , and I _can’t fucking stand it_ —“ Young broke off, abruptly aware that his voice was about to crack. “I can’t fucking stand it,” he said again. “I can’t—“

He had backed Rush up against the metal bulkhead. Rush was staring up at him, breathing fast. The smirk had dropped from his face, and in its place was something stripped-raw and unreadable. “What are you going to do about it, then?” he whispered.

It was a dare. It was a challenge.

Young drew a fast, shaky breath. For one instant, he felt frozen, unable to move.

Then he was lunging forward, and Rush was pushing off the bulkhead to meet him, and they were colliding in a half-starved feast of contact that took long moments to resolve itself into a kiss. Even then, it had none of a conventional kiss’s hallmarks, or at least Young thought dazedly that it was not kissing the way he’d ever practiced it. It was greedy and desperate and uncoordinated: they were stumbling backward; Young’s hands were gripping Rush’s hair; he was sinking teeth into Rush’s lower lip and groaning; Rush was gasping and his wet mouth was moving frantic and hard; then _Rush’s_ hands were tangling in _Young’s_ hair, and Young was dragging Rush’s shirt and jacket up, getting a hand up under them, making an involuntary sound at the feel of Rush’s warm bare skin, and that was nothing to the noise that Rush made when Young touched him right over the hipbone, and Young pushed his tongue into Rush’s mouth, ravenous for that sound, and the hallway lights had flared at some point to an excruciating luminescence, so bright that Young was afraid they might break, and Young laughed low against Rush’s mouth and said, “The lights are—“ and Rush said, not very clearly, “Shut the— shut the— _fuck_ —“ and didn’t finish the sentence, because Young was shoving him roughly against the bulkhead and redoubling his efforts and Rush was grabbing urgently at Young’s hips, and—

—and something was _happening_ in their minds. Or— it was impossible to say whose mind it was happening in. It was as though Young’s mind had suddenly, in this single instant, become the right shape for it to serve as the key to a lock that he had never previously known existed, and he had fitted himself to the lock without meaning to, because it was there, because it _wanted_ to be opened, and what lay beyond it was Rush. Rush as Young had never seen him before, not dark and obscure and chaotic and constantly retreating; not difficult to interpret and overshadowed by the ship, but bright and clear and totally transparent. Young could understand the shape of his mind for the first time. He recognized it as being made up of those hundreds of thousands of threads that he’d encountered so often in the ship. He had only ever known them in their broken-down forms. He had never seen the structure that they made when they were _being Rush_. It was—

A humming, rich, restless, multidimensional sort of fabric, winding over and through and around a topologically complex space, made up of moving flows of desire, winding and unwinding, wrestling their ways in and out of almost-musical harmony, and it was charming, and warm, and anxious, and full of _wanting_ in the ways that he’d always known those threads to be, but it was also—

 _God._ It was _damaged._ No wonder the threads could never hold themselves together. Someone had taken a knife and hacked at the whole thing. Or— not one knife and one someone, but many, over time. Young could see all the places where the threads were cut or torn or overstretched or frayed. He wondered how much of that was _him_ , him and the ship and their constant goddamn battles. Some, he thought. Not much, but some, which was too much. Everything else was— he couldn’t even begin to guess. The Nakai interrogation? The Lucian Alliance? What Telford had done to Rush? The purely human damage Rush had suffered in his earlier life, before he could even imagine there was such a thing as a stargate?

Those threads still knew Young, even in their current form, and thrilled to his presence in their vague, particulate, nonhuman way. Young was cautious, afraid of harming them further. But they didn’t want him to be cautious. They wanted _him._ They wanted him in a specific place, demanding his attention with an imperious attitude that was distinctly Rush. He let himself be pulled toward that one place, one specific wound that seemed to bleed out raw pulses of need for him. The closer he got to it, the quieter it grew, until it felt safe and simply basked in the substance of his nearness. Young almost physically flinched as he recognized that ebb-and-flow pattern of pain. It was what he felt when he and Rush moved too far from each other and reunited. _This_ was the broken place in their link— not something they shared, not something mechanical _between_ them, but something that had always been _inside of Rush_ : the scar of an abandonment so intense and so shocking that the lasting pain of it had transmitted itself to Young. Not even a scar, because scars showed healing, and this was something that had never healed.

Young should have _known_ ; how could he not have _known_ ; how could he not have _noticed?_

 _I’m here now_ , he thought, not projecting, but sort of feeling-at-it, in the way he always did with the little particle-threads. He lavished that place with his attention, feeling a strange sense of being double, as though he were holding it in the same way he was holding Rush, clutching at it, practicing some new physical communication, a wordless _I want you, I want you._ Under his sustained regard, the broken threads seemed to bloom, regerminating, growing warm and secure and almost smug, no longer sinking their claws into him and shrieking for him not to go, but humming in contentment.

Rush echoed that faint humming sound, as though Young had done something unexpectedly pleasant. The two of them were still wrapped together, but the kiss had grown increasingly gentle. Young wondered briefly if Rush could see into his mind as well, if they had both been focused on more than the purely physical. But the purely physical was too distracting now that it had regained his attention. He stroked a thumb over Rush’s bare hipbone, and Rush made that same contented sound again, relaxed and almost drowsy. Young pressed him once more back against the bulkhead, slowly working his amenable mouth open. Rush trailed one hand down Young’s back, setting at his waist with a restless touch that suggested he’d like to get Young’s shirt up. Young really wanted that, Rush’s hand on his naked skin. But— they were in a _hallway,_ he realized abruptly. Near the _gateroom._ They’d been here for— he didn’t want to know how long.

With some reluctance, he disengaged.

They looked at each other.

Young couldn’t seem to keep his eyes from wandering back to Rush’s mouth. “I,” he said, and had no idea how to address the situation, especially when Rush had a soft, half-uncertain expression, one that Young had never seen on him. “I’m really sorry,” he tried. “I don’t know why—“

“I confess,” Rush said quietly, “I’m somewhat unclear on that point also.”

He touched Young’s hand, which was still resting at the bare skin of Rush’s waistline.

Young hurriedly drew it away. In fact, he took a short step back from Rush entirely, _not_ — he told himself— because the proximity to Rush was making it difficult for him to think.

Rush seemed amused. “You realize,” he said, “that this confirms something I’ve long suspected about you.”

“Oh, really?” Young asked with trepidation. “And what’s that?”

“You, colonel, are an awful lot of work.”

Young ducked his head, grinning. “Seriously, Rush—“

Rush silenced him by reaching out and taking his hand. For a minute, Young’s heart lurched. Fuck, he thought to himself, with a sinking feeling. Fuck. Fuck.

With his other hand, Rush reached into his jacket pocket and took out the cigarettes that Telford had given him. He pressed the pack into Young’s unresisting palm. Neither of them looked at one another: only at the place where their hands touched.

Young said, hoarsely, “Rush—“

But Rush was turning and heading for the main corridor, leaving Young standing there with the cigarettes in his hand.

“Are you coming?” Rush said over his shoulder. “I don’t have all day. As you might expect, my schedule’s quite busy. You know me: plots, plots, plots.”

“Yeah,” Young whispered, watching him. “I know you.”


	27. Chapter 27

By twenty hundred hours, Young had become aware that two masterful feats of orchestration were simultaneously taking place, each of which was all the more remarkable for avoiding the acknowledgement of the other. The first was on his part, and it involved ensuring that Telford and Rush never crossed paths. The second was on Rush’s part, and it involved ensuring that he and Young were never alone in a room. Presumably, the orchestrator of each feat would have preferred for his work to go undetected. But Young didn’t kid himself that Rush wasn’t aware of what he was doing, and he himself had picked up pretty early on what Rush was up to.

Which was fine. What Rush was up to. That was fine. He didn’t want or need to talk about it. The kiss. Which had been— obviously a bad idea, and he didn’t even know why he’d—

Since he wasn’t—

Not that there was anything—

But he wasn’t.

He wasn’t.

(He wasn't.)

It didn't even—

It didn't even need to be said.

The real issue was _Rush—_

Who hadn’t shown _any_ reaction to what had happened, and _that_ was suspicious, especially because Rush had started the morning out already pretty high-strung, as evidenced by his tantrum in the gateroom, and if anything, Rush was the one who should have been freaking out, because most of the time that was what Rush _did_ , and Young would’ve expected him to be throwing shit by now, or yelling at Brody about air recirculators, or eviscerating Volker’s calculations, or showing off some horrifying new connection with the ship, probably something he’d been doing for weeks and saving up to reveal when he felt the need to cause drama, almost certainly to distract Young from something else that was going on, like Rush _kissing_ him, or him kissing Rush, or however you wanted to frame it, so why wasn’t Rush doing that, what did it _mean_ , and did it _matter_ one way or another, when Young was already fucked, fucked, fucked, because he was sitting across from Rush at dinner, staring at him and seeing someone it was possible to kiss.

“You’re looking all glaiket,” Rush commented from the other side of the mess table. He frowned. “Do I want to know what you’re thinking about?”

“You can’t tell?” Young said weakly. He added, as an afterthought, “I have no idea what you just said, by the way.”

“Never mind. It’s your normal expression. And— no,” Rush said guardedly, staring down at the table. “Your thoughts are often— difficult for me to parse.”

“So you’re just as mystified as I am? That’s a relief.”

Rush glanced up. Their eyes met for a very long moment, before both of them looked abruptly away. They seemed to have arrived, by accident and without any direct invocation, at the one subject that neither of them was willing to discuss.

Rush cleared his throat. “So I assume you’re done eating, then,” he said. “We're going to the control interface room. I need you to carry something.”

"You know, I'm not your valet," Young said.

Rush made a dismissive gesture. "Yes, yes."

* * *

 _Something_ turned out to be a massive textbook that Rush slammed onto the monitor bank as they entered— startling Chloe and Eli, who had been comparing their new iPod collections from Earth.

“Jesus,” Eli said. “Saying _hi_ is fun, too, y’know?” He looked down at the textbook. “ _Physical Chemistry, A Molecular Approach?_ Congratulations, you win the award for most boring personal item. Also, that thing looks like it weighs more than five pounds.”

“It’s twelve pounds,” Rush said imperiously. “I have good news and bad news. Which would you prefer to hear first?”

“Uh,” Eli said. “The good news?”

“The good news is that your horrendous deficiencies in quantum mechanics are about to be remedied. The fact that neither of you has any background in the field is unacceptable. So. Chapters One and Two. Day after tomorrow.”

They stared at him.

“The good news is that you’re _giving us homework?_ On top of _everything else?_ ” Eli looked insulted. “That’s the _good news_? Also, why did you have them send this hunk of junk through the gate? Couldn’t you have gotten some SGC intern to scan it?”

“Digital work hardly provides the same level of engagement,” Rush said with a certain amount of disdain.

Chloe had opened the book, and was studying the inside cover. She looked up at Rush, her finger tracing something written there.  “This is your book,” she said.

Rush was avoiding her eyes. “Well, I certainly don’t need it.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

Rush cleared his throat. “The bad news, thankfully, applies only to Eli.”

“Thankfully,” Eli said.

“You’ve been assigned as the liaison to Telford’s research team,” Young said, getting in before Rush.

“This does not absolve you of your normal science team responsibilities,” Rush cut back in.

“Are you kidding me? I’m supposed to do all the stuff I normally do, _plus_ help Telford, _plus_ teach myself quantum mechanics?”

Rush shrugged, unimpressed.

“There’s a briefing tomorrow at oh seven hundred,” Young said. “Telford expects you to be there.”

Eli threw up his hands. “Okay, no way. I do not start before nine o’clock. That is a central tenet of the Church of Wallace. I’m going to have to take this to Wray.”

“Eli,” Young said. “I think it could be very useful for you to attend this briefing.” He gave Eli a significant look.

Rush rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes. Very subtle, both of you. Don’t you—“ He fixed Young with a sidelong glare— “have somewhere to be?”

//Stay out of trouble,// Young projected at him, before heading out into the hall.

It was the first thing he’d projected at Rush since that morning, he realized when he was alone. They’d been trying to stay out of each other’s heads, not in the angry, hostile way they did when they were fighting, or with the stiff, wary isolation that _followed_ a fight, but with a tentative sort of hyperawareness. If Young hadn’t known any better, he would have called it _shy_. And that made him think of Rush’s face, that morning, after Young had kissed him, that soft, uncertain expression, which was just—

— _not_ something he was going to think about right now.

He was pretty sure, at least, that Rush’s lack of response meant that he didn’t know what Young had done in his head. Not only would he have reacted with predictable fury, but if he’d known they could separate— and Young was almost positive they could, or that at the very least he’d improved their radius by encouraging that single torn place to knit— he’d have been, well, probably getting as far away from Young as possible.

God. Young hadn’t even thought about that. If Rush wasn’t stuck to him any longer, Young would have to put him under a 24-hour-guard if he wanted to stop Rush from wandering off into the bowels of the ship with the AI or with _Telford_ — and that was something Rush wouldn’t forgive him for.

 _Although Rush_ , a treacherous voice in his head whispered, _seems willing to forgive you pretty much anything so far._

He sighed and pressed his forehead briefly to a bulkhead before hitting the door controls to one of the conference rooms. Inside, TJ, Greer, and Scott, were sitting around a table. They looked up as Young entered.

“Where’s Rush?” TJ asked.

When had that become the first question people asked him? “Next door,” Young said shortly as he took a seat. “Inflicting himself on the science team. I don’t want him to listen to this.”

“How does _that_ work?” Greer said, raising an eyebrow.

“He really isn’t that interested in me.”

“Huh,” Greer said neutrally. His look could have been skepticism or amusement.

Scott glanced from one to the other of them, clearly confused. “Am I… missing something?”

Young made an exhausted gesture. He was too tired for this. “Does one of you guys want to… ?”

“Him and the doc mindmelded,” Greer said matter-of-factly. “A while back. Now they can hear each other’s thoughts.”

On the other hand, maybe it had been a bad idea to outsource the explanation. “That’s not… really what it is.”

“The ship connected their minds at the same time it linked itself to Rush,” TJ said, stepping in smoothly.

“Oh,” Scott said. “Um, okay. I guess that… kind of makes sense?”

“Does it?” Young said wearily. “I’m glad someone thinks so.”

“I just mean, it explains a lot. About— you and him. I guess. So…” He trailed off. “What is that _like?_ If I’m. Um. Permitted to ask that. Sir.”

Young waved off the hesitation. “This is an informal meeting. But the answer is…” He looked down. “Ask me again when this is all over, maybe.”

What was it like being linked to Rush? Agonizing, he wanted to say. Intolerable. He wanted to say, It’s changing me. Surely he would _never_ have kissed Rush, would never have _wanted_ to kiss Rush, if it hadn’t been for— no one particular event, but all of them, a thousand small alterations that had gotten inside him and somehow started to propagate. He hadn’t noticed until it was too late that he wasn’t the same person. The least of it was whatever Rush had done to his cognitive structure. Who the hell cared about knowing math? But everything else, this whole slow transformation that he hadn’t agreed to, or hadn’t known what he was agreeing to when he did— and _maybe_ he would’ve said no, but how could he even know now if he would’ve, when he wasn’t the same person, and he wanted things now that he wouldn’t have wanted then? It was just so goddamn—

He realized he was clenching his hands on the edge of the table and forced himself to stop. “Anyway,” he said. “That’s not what this meeting is about. There’s a reason it’s informal, and that’s because I want to talk to you about Telford.” He caught himself. “ _Colonel_ Telford. And his project on Destiny.”

“Yeah,” Greer said, drawing out the word with a tinge of apprehension. “What exactly _is_ that project?”

“His project is Rush.” Young could feel himself biting the words out. “It always has been Rush.”

“What do you mean by that?” TJ asked, looking taken aback.

Young had to pause to get his temper in check. He was going to have to keep it that way if he didn’t want to draw Rush’s attention, and he wasn’t sure how he was going to manage that while explaining Telford’s whole history with Rush. Or not the _whole_ history, since Rush had pretty much as good as confirmed that—

That _definitely_ wasn’t going to help him keep his temper in check.

He checked in on Rush, just to make sure that he was still distracted. Rush was superficially listening to Eli give a rundown of the sensor data they’d collected on the third obelisk planet, but in fact the majority of his attention was on the AI, which was lecturing him from somewhere off to his left.

“You need to work on splitting your focus and sustaining your attention on several avenues at once,” the AI was saying. “I am not talking about the human concept of multitasking. I am talking about running complex executable programs that require continuous live input at the same time. True parallel processing. You must be able to split your attention at least four ways. You are finding it difficult even to recalibrate voltages while thermoregulating.”

So that was just great.

Young shut his eyes. “The nine-chevron address Jackson found,” he began, “had to be unlocked before we could dial it. You all know this. There was a— formula, a kind of mathematical code.” He didn’t mention that he could understand portions of it now, vaguely, that he could picture the Boltzmann equation and explain its relevance to the role of the Icarus planet. Distantly, he wondered if he ought to be able to do that. It wasn’t really the same as solving problems that were put in front of him. That was about putting thoughts together. This was more like information that someone had dumped in his brain.

But he couldn’t let himself get sidetracked. “That was the Icarus Project,” he said. “Telford had another project, which was to unlock whatever we found after we dialed the nine-chevron address.”

“The Destiny,” Greer said.

“Yeah, Destiny,” Young said. “His project was Destiny, before there was a Destiny. All he knew was that whatever they found was going to be locked, and he was going to need to unlock it. So he made a key.”

“Wait,” TJ said, looking disturbed. “He—“

“He found someone who was a close match to the Ancient genome. And he used technology developed by Anubis— the goa’uld Anubis— to electrophysiologically alter that person’s brain.”

There was a short silence.

“And that’s Rush,” Scott said. “That person. You said _that person_ , but you’re talking about Rush.”

“Yeah,” Young said. He felt his throat tighten. “Rush.”

Another silence.

“Well,” Greer said. “That does explain a lot.” It was supposed to be a joke, but even Greer didn’t look like he found it that funny.

“He was still Rush,” Young said. “Even before all of that. Just… less Rush as opposed to more Rush, if you know what I mean.”

That did make them smile, at least a little, as though he’d given them permission.

TJ said, “So that’s why all of this happened, with the ship. He unlocked it. But why did he try so hard not to, if that’s what he was always supposed to be doing?”

It was a good question, and one that Young only imperfectly understood the answer to. “I don’t know,” he said. “He was afraid of what would happen. According to him. Of what would happen to all of us if he did. He wasn’t in a great—“ He hesitated, wondering how much detail to give them. It didn’t feel right to expose all of Rush’s secrets, or things that weren’t even secrets, but were just… He thought of TJ saying, _The privacy of a man who has none left to speak of._

He looked at her. Their eyes met.

“He wasn’t in a great place,” Young said. “Some stuff went down between him and Telford.” An understatement. “That may have contributed to it.”

“But Telford wants to, what, finish the project?” Greer was wearing the look he usually got when talking about Telford. “What does that even mean, in the real world?”

“I don’t know. I think Rush knows, and the AI knows, but they’re not telling. I’m trying to get it out of them, but it’s—“ He waved a hand tiredly. “You know.”

“Yeah,” Greer said, echoing his weariness.

“So—“ Scott’s brow was creased. “Wait, I’m not really clear on this. Are we in favor of this project, or not in favor of this project?”

“Not in favor,” Young said.

“But if it’s the whole point of the mission—“

“Gotta be a reason they’re not telling us,” Greer pointed out. “Like— they figure we’re not going to like it. Plus—“

“It’s killing Rush,” Young cut in. Too loudly, he realized a beat late. He clenched one hand into a fist, and waited a second before continuing, quieter. “It’s _changing_ Rush. And it's killing him, and he doesn’t seem to give a damn about it.”

Scott was pale. He looked at TJ, who said nothing. Her lips were pressed tightly together. She nodded almost invisibly: a confirmation.

“And— we need him,” Young pointed out, also a beat late. “So obviously, from a tactical point of view, it’d be best if we… kept him alive as long as…” He didn’t finish the sentence.

“Right,” TJ whispered.

“That’s where you all come in. Because we need to keep him away from Telford. Keep the two of them from— I don’t even know what they might do together. I don’t trust Telford to not _do_ something to Rush, and I certainly don’t trust Rush to— well, I don’t trust Rush, period, but I especially don’t trust him not to completely fuck himself up for the sake of, God, I don’t even know, whatever—“ He swallowed. “Whatever excuse he can get his hands on. So just— don’t let him be alone with Telford, or anyone from Telford’s team. Don’t make a big show of it— we need to seem like we’re cooperating completely. I don’t want to give Telford any reason to stage a bureaucratic coup. But don’t let it happen. You’re going to need to watch for this _all the time_. And no matter what happens to me, _no matter what_ , Telford is _not_ to _ever_ pull him out of the neural interface chair. Understood?”

“Understood,” Scott said.

The others nodded.

“Good. Now.” He turned to Greer. “I need to talk to you one-on-one.”

He waited for TJ and Scott to leave, then leaned forward, letting the stiffness of his posture fade. He wanted to make it clear to Greer that this meeting was a step even beyond informal.

“You know,” he said conversationally, “Rush thinks I should make you my second.”

Greer grinned. ‘That man has _no_ understanding of the chain of command.”

“I’ve given up,” Young said wryly. “He likes you, though. I get the sense you understand him pretty well. That you get where he’s coming from.”

Greer’s expression was carefuller now, closed. “I mean,” he said at last. “I’m no genius.”

“No,” Young said.

The silence sat between them.

“I need you on his side," Young said at last. "Not _my_ side; I'm not asking for you some kind of— personal loyalty; I'm not asking you to make some kind of pledge; I don't give a damn what you think about me, as a person or a commander. But I know you, and I know you're loyal to him, and— he’s going to need somebody on his side, if he's going to make it through this. Especially since I don’t think he’s on his own goddamn side,” He had to force his voice to stay steady. “What Telford’s done to him in the past is just really _fucked-up_ , and Rush doesn’t seem to realize that. I think he’d let him do it again. I’m _sure_ he would. He just doesn’t…” He paused, feeling helpless. “With certain people, he has this— Maybe you know.”

Greer didn’t say anything. His gaze was unreadable.

“If I go down," Young said, "for any reason, Telford's the one who'll be in command. The one giving orders. And I need to know that—"

"I won't let Telford get to him," Greer said. 

"Even if it means—"

"Like you said," Greer said. "I'm loyal to him."

His eyes were very dark and intense.

“I’ll stand behind any action you take,” Young said quietly. “ _Any_ action.”

They sat there, the air heavy with implications.

“He really can’t pick any of this up?” Greer finally asked, breaking the tension.

“Oh, he’s…” Young shook his head. “Distractible. And, like I said, he mostly doesn’t care.”

“Right,” Greer said with a thoughtful look.

“I’m probably pushing it, though. I should get over to the briefing.”

“I don’t envy you,” Greer said as he stood.

* * *

When Young entered the control interface room, Volker was in the midst of some kind of presentation about the cosmic background radiation. Young leaned against the wall in the back of the room, trying not to be a distraction. He didn’t bother paying much attention to Volker. His attention was fixed on Rush, who was _also_ not paying much attention to Volker. Rush was staring out at the empty air to his left. No mystery what was happening _there._ Still, though Young thought he ought to be angry about it, and  _was_ , in the uneasy way he was angry about everything happening to Rush, everything that Rush was doing, or maybe everything that Rush was  _letting_ be done, he couldn't help himself from taking a moment to just... watch Rush, when Rush didn't seem to know he was looking. The faint marks of worry that never quite left his forehead. His eyes, always slightly darker than Young expected. His hair half-shoved clumsily behind one ear. Young wanted to reach out and straighten it. It was a confusing feeling. He could imagine, now, the not-quite-heat of Rush's skin. Heat that wasn't heat, that turned to heat when he touched it, or something else, equally electric—

As though he could sense something of what Young was thinking, Rush's eyes flicked over to him. He didn't say anything, though— just frowned slightly, looking uncertain before abruptly averting his gaze. 

Young had to stop this. He clenched one hand into a fist, feeling his nails bite into his palm.

He focused on Volker.

“In all the sensor data we combed through,” Volker was saying, “there was nothing that seemed to correlate with the instant we were forced out of FTL, so we pulled all of the raw data from the readings we took during the time following FTL drop-out, which, for the first planet, was really quite extensive—“

Rush was twitching a pen between his fingers. It was hard not to be aware of him.  _He_ was focused on Volker too, now; Young could feel it: a bright cloud of disconnected calculations like a sort of halo of attention in the air. Whatever Volker was saying, Rush was very interested in it. When had Young's first impulse upon seeing Rush interested in something become a kind of fondness, instead of fear? 

“—We didn’t find anything that correlated with us dropping out of FTL," Volker said, "but there was something that correlated with the point in time when the obelisks emitted the… you know… creepy column of light. Each obelisk generated an electromagnetic field precisely contemporaneous with the appearance of an unusual pattern in the CBR.”

Volker clicked a button, which projected the pattern in midair: a bright, wavering, disc-shaped image.

Young recognized it.

Trepidation filled him up like icy vacuum leaking into a torn space suit. Or— that wasn't how it worked, the energy transfer. Rush would have mocked him he'd caught the thought. But Young couldn't let him catch that thought, because Rush was the source of that trepidation, the source of the pattern. Rush was where Young had glimpsed it, though Young had had to fight him for even that much. Rush with his secrets, Rush with his lies and feints and evasions, Rush who controlled the fate of the ship—

—Rush pushing back his untidy, touchable hair, frowning absentmindedly as he turned towards Young, sensing his reaction. "You’ve seen this before?" he asked.

One of the first officers Young had served under had said commanders had to have two bodies, one that belonged to everyone else and one that belonged to themselves. The first body was the one that followed orders, that  _gave_ orders, that didn't hurt, that didn't  _feel_. That body cared about only one thing: getting the unit back to base with their mission completed. 

Young had never figured out how to have two bodies, or maybe how to keep them separate. It was why he'd fucked up so much, with TJ and before that. Since. Because he let one body leak into the other: the body that wanted to touch, to protect, and the body that did what was necessary, that was in command—

//It's nothing,// he said, putting a brutal tamper on his thoughts. //Tell Volker to keep talking.//

//Fine,// Rush said, sounding miffed. "Volker— continue."

“Uh— okay?" Volker said tentatively, looking from one of them to the other. He'd screwed up his eyes, like he was staring into a very confusing sun. The air was thick with unspoken questions, which Rush was very resolutely ignoring. Young thought, resigned, that they could only get away with that for so long. 

“What you’re looking at here," Volker said, gesturing to the screen, "is a temperature modulation in the CBR. One of these has appeared at the moment of initiation of the beam of light produced by each of the three obelisks we’ve encountered. Moreover, if you render our readings of the CBR in three dimensions—“ He paused, clicking a button, and the midair screen shifted to show a three-dimensional projection of the planet, obelisk, and Destiny. “I think showing you is going to be more effective. This is an animated time lapse of the readings we took.”

He clicked another button, and as Young watched, a beam of white light shot out of the blue-and-green world they’d escaped from. The planet slowly started to draw the animated Destiny in.

“Now the planet is starting to go out of phase,” Volker said. “I’ve rendered it as the planet fading out, because from our perspective, the planet would disappear as the phase shift progressed. Now watch what starts to happen to the CBR.”

The portion of the planet nearest the obelisk began to fade, creating an expanding crater of phase-shifted matter, the center of which was the obelisk. Young saw the uniform, semi-transparent yellow glow of the cosmic background radiation begin to penetrate the space being liberated as matter when out of phase. As it did so, the glow of the CBR changed from yellow to red.

“The CBR is heating up locally in the vicinity of the planet, forming a catenary surface of increased temperature as it advances, which, when you render it two-dimensionally, looks like a disc. In terms of what this means— well, your guess is as good as mine. Or, probably, better, because I don't really have a guess.”

There was a pause. 

Young stared at that slice of blood-red space, smooth and flattened. It rotated neatly in mid-air. “This pattern," he said. "In the CBR. Does it have anything to do with the pattern in the CBR that’s related to Destiny’s mission?”

Chloe, her head bent, stole a careful, sidelong glance at Rush. When no one else spoke, she said at last, "It's possible. It's—"

Rush shot her a sharp look.

She hesitated, biting her lip.

“Chloe?” Young prompted.

“It’s—similar to the pattern cosmologists predict for sites at which d-branes of the multiverse collide,” she said quickly, lowering her gaze.

“D-branes of the multiverse?” Young said.

“Yes.” She paused again, and swallowed. When no one else on the science team jumped in, she said, “A d-brane is a type of dynamical object that— well, it’s a way of describing the idea that the four-dimensional universe, the three spatial dimensions plus time, exists in a multidimensional space called the bulk. Each d-brane exists side-by-side with the others, and each comprises an observable 4-D universe— plus or minus small spatial dimensions that are subject to compactification, sort of, um, curled up inside Calabi-Yau manifolds.”

There was something almost hypnotic about her quiet, even way of speaking, and the small nervous gestures she kept making with her hands. “We, because of our dimensionality,” she said, “can never make it off our own d-brane. That means we can never perceive the world in its multidimensional form. Except. Um. Mathematically. This is— this is theoretical, obviously; it’s superstring theory; it’s—“

She darted another glance at Rush, beseechingly as though seeking some kind of approval. He nodded neutrally to her. He had a surprisingly soft expression.

Chloe took a deep breath. “But people have predicted the energy signature that the CBR might display if and when two d-branes were to collide, and their predictions look like… well, like this. So, if we assume those predictions are correct, then it's possible that—"

“Damn,” Brody said quietly.

“Yeah,” Volker said. 

“—The obelisks may be a bridge between parallel universes,” Chloe finished.

The room was silent for a long time.

Young watched the circle of red space spin, like a coin that someone had tossed in the air, one that hadn't yet landed. He was thinking about those two bodies again. How did it work? Was there a switch you could flip? He tried to imagine that his hands weren't his hands. That the bones of his face weren't his own; his teeth, his lips, the tongue he moistened them with before he asked, "And how do we think this connects to Destiny's mission? I mean—"

The full and sudden weight of Rush's attention slammed into him. //What are you doing?// Rush demanded.

"—If you were going to hazard a guess as to what Destiny's mission is," Young continued relentlessly, "what would you say, at this point?"

//Stop,// Rush said.

“Well,” Volker said, “the whole idea of the Destiny traveling to the literal edge of the universe has never really made sense. I mean, space is infinite. That’s pretty well established.”

//Stop this,// Rush said.

Young said levelly, //Stop what? Stop doing what it takes to protect this crew and this ship?//

//The AI—//

//If the AI doesn't like it, it can fuck off.//

 “We pretty much know what the Destiny’s mission is, right?” Park said uncertainly. “To travel toward this pattern. To study it.”

“It must be more than that,” Brody said. “The Ancients were coming here for a reason. They must have thought the Destiny would help them. They’d just been all but wiped out by a plague.”

//Stop it,// Rush said again. He was breathing shallowly. His hands had started to curl into fists.

“A lot of energy would be liberated by the collision of adjacent branes,” Volker said. “A lot.”

“What would happen if we waited for the collision to complete and then flew into the advancing phase wave?” Eli wondered.

// _Everett_ ,// Rush said.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Brody said darkly. “That seed ship we found got trapped in a planet.”

“Maybe they didn’t know what they were doing,” Eli said. “They must have misinterpreted the purpose of the planets. Maybe we’re supposed to use one. Maybe they’re gateways."

Chloe said nothing. She was watching Rush, her eyes large and anxious.

“Rush?” Young asked. Somehow, his voice was still flat and level. It was that other body's voice. "Do you have any thoughts you want to share?"

Rush didn't answer. His eyebrows had drawn together in a vague and startled expression. He seemed to be looking through Young, beyond him, at something that hurt.

" _Rush_ ," Young said again.

Rush flinched. "I—" he said in a strained voice. "I can't— say—"

"You _can_ say. It's a hypothetical situation. Any ship, traveling through space. What would happen if that ship were to fly into the advancing phase wave?”

                                                                         Something           was

                                                                                                                     happening,

                                                                                    thedata the        th

                                                                                                                              insuffi       c     i en   t        he

                                                  t  he                                 somet  hing          

                                                                     w as                                 dont   TAKE         itdon  ' t       TOU CH         m   e   

                                                         itwasn 't           y e s      he said                  yo u   canhave w h   at    y       ou want THEN

                                                                 and th     th                   th              and then

“I can't—“ Rush forced out.

01001001 01110100 00100111 01110011 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100  
00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 01110011 00101100 00100000  
01101001 01110100 00100111 01110011 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100  
00100000 01111001 01101111

 _No,_ Young thought fiercely at the hard grip of the AI. 

01110101 01110010 01110011 00101100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101  
00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01101000  
01100001 01110110

_I won’t let you—_

01100101 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100001

“Can you—“

01001001 01101110 01110100 01100101 01110010 01100110 01100101 01110010  
01100101 01101110 01100011 01100101 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110100  
01101000 00100000

_Get out. This is mine._

01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101101 01101001 01110011 01110011

01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110101  
01101110 01100001 01100011 01100011 01100101 01110000 01110100 01100001  
01100010 01101100 01100101

“Please— don’t—“

01000001 01100011 01100011 01100101 01110011 01110011 00100000 01101001  
01110011 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01110000 01100101 01110010  
01101101 01101001

_Mine._

01110100 01110100 01100101 01100100 00101100 00100000 01000101 01110110  
01100101 01110010 01100101 01110100 01110100 00101110 00100000 01000111  
01100101 01110100 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101111  
01100110 00100000 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101000 01100101  
01100001 01100100 00101110

“What are you _doing?_ ” Chloe asked, her voice high and frantic.

“Getting an answer,” Young said.

“I,” Rush began.

His hands were clenching and unclenching.

01000100 01101111 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01110011 01100001  
01111001 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01001001 00100000 01100011  
01100001 01101110

_It’s mine. Get out._

00100111 01110100 00100000 01100001 01101100 01101100 01101111 01110111  
00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000  
01110011 01100001 01111001 00100000 01101001 01110100

“ _Moltos res possibiles sent,”_ Rush managed.

“What did he say?” Young demanded.

Park whispered, “He said— many things become possible.”

“That’s not an answer,” Young said to Rush.

“I—“ Rush breathed.

01010011 01110100 01101111 01110000 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001  
01101110 01101011 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01100001 01100010  
01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01001110  
01101001 01100011 01101011 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000  
01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110111 01101111 01101110 00100111  
01110100

“I— can’t—“

01100111 01100101 01110100 00100000 01101000 01110101 01110010 01110100  
00100000 01100100 01101111 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01101101  
01100001 01101011 01100101 00100000 01101101 01100101

“Yes, you can. It's hypothetical. Just a hypothetical question.”

“I—“ Rush said.

                                        There  
                                        was  
                                        something  
                                        nauseating  
                                        about  
                                        the  
                                        inside  
                                        of  
                                        his  
                                        head.

“I. The.”

01000100 01001111 01001110 00100111 01010100

                                        Just—

“Crew. The crew will.”

                                        Static.

01000100 01001111 01001110 00100111 01010100

“Be. Be all right.”

                                        Static.

“So that _is_ the plan?” Young asked quickly. “To try and fly into one of these things?”

Rush didn’t answer.

                                        Static.

His hands had stopped clenching.

                                        Static.

He had gone very, very still.

                                                             _Rush._

                                        Static.

He had stopped projecting some time ago. Young hadn’t noticed.

 _Everett_ , he had said.

Young felt sick. He raised his hand to cover his mouth, as though to remind him that he had one. His mouth. The mouth he'd kissed Rush with.

In a sudden, awful surge, he retreated from Rush's mind. A half-beat later, the AI's blank, electric presence was gone, too, and Rush went limp, as though something inside of him had been severed. He folded forwards in his chair.

Chloe rushed to him, looking distressed. “Dr. Rush?” she said, her voice high and fractured.

Rush raised his head slowly. A thick line of blood began to run like a spreading ink-mark from his nose.

Young could feel the moment when Rush’s consciousness returned from whenever it went when it was nothing. He felt the cavern at the bottom of his mind almost crack in half with pain— a bright, swarming, bitter _too-muchness_ of headache as Rush made the transition from that horrifying static to panicked disarray.

"What the fuck did you do to him?" Eli demanded, staring at Young with an appalled expression.

"Let it go, Eli," Rush said his voice vague and exhausted. Chloe was supporting him, one of her arms wrapped around his shoulders, and had produced a tissue from her pocket, which he held pressed to his face.

"No. No way. Nowhere in any of the database shit about this so-called  _mental connection_ did it mention  _anything_ about being able to—"

"Mental connection?" Volker interjected. "What  _mental connection?"_

"Um, get on the bandwagon already!" Eli gestured angrily between Rush and Young. "The ship glued their brains together, and now they talk all the time in their heads? And apparently give each other aneurysms whenever they get pissed off? Which—"

"Eli," Chloe said in a low voice. "It can wait."

"No. No way. I want to know what  _he_ —" Eli leveled a finger at Young— "did."

Young was trying not to look at Rush, who had his eyes closed. His face was ashen. Chloe had bent her head, and was murmuring something in his ear.

"It was necessary," Young whispered. He didn't recognize the voice as his. A little louder, he said, "The ship's AI is trying to stop Rush from telling me about Destiny's mission. That's— what happens. That's how it stops him. It—"

"Look," Rush said abruptly, opening his eyes. "Colonel Young is doing his best, all right? What you saw wasn't his fault. Let's leave it at that."

An uneasy stillness descended upon the room.

Rush stood, shoving the tissue into his pocket and shaking off Chloe’s hands. He was slightly unsteady. “Briefing tomorrow. Usual time.”

“Rush—“ Eli began.

But Rush was limping determinedly towards the door, and didn't acknowledge him. It was clear that he considered the discussion to be over. Once again, Young had no choice but to follow him, though he felt— as he’d felt in the gateroom that morning— that he was being pushed into a position that was deleterious to him.

* * *

Out in the hall, he caught up with Rush within a few seconds.

Neither of them spoke at once.

//Fuck you,// Rush said abruptly. His projection was shaky. Whatever had happened between the AI and Young had taken a toll on him. //You can’t even wait till we’re in private to try and pry me open like a lockbox? You have to do it in front of the entire _science team?_ //

//I’m sorry,// Young said. //I didn’t mean to—//

//Oh, you fucking _meant_ to. You knew exactly what would happen, and you didn't give a damn. I’m just your own fucking personal Gaza Strip, just fucking—  _territory_ to be conquered, any time you feel like it, by whoever gets there first, just—//

“I’m sorry,” Young said out loud. He swallowed. He didn't know what else to say.

//Do you have any fucking idea what you’re doing? Any idea at _all?_ //

 Young was silent for a moment, feeling skinned raw. //I guess not,// he finally said.

//I have a limited amount of space to store information. When you ask, when you try to— the AI starts annexing what it thinks _you’re_ going to annex, and blocks us both out of whole networks of information by taking up that space itself. In my fucking _brain_. _You_ then do the same goddamn thing, which leaves me with almost _nothing_ to work with. I can’t talk, I can’t— I don’t understand what you’re asking— eventually I don’t even have a fucking clue who you are. In the end I stop forming memories of what’s happening. That’s the last thing. God. I wish it were first.//

Young’s sense of horror was so strong that it actually physically nauseated him. He had to stop walking. Rush stopped too; oddly, his first reaction was concern for Young. He even pushed a current of reassurance at him, which was—

God.  _God_.

Young shut his eyes. //But— you’re okay now?//

//I know my own goddamned name, if that’s what you mean.// Rush sighed, and seemed to swallow his remaining anger. His mental weather and landscape had significantly stabilized. //Yes. Fine. All right. I’m okay.//

//You’re not,// Young whispered. //I know you’re not. I'm so sorry.//

//Look, it’s not like I’m forbidding you to do it. In fact, if anything, I'm impressed. I didn't think you had it in you. Just pick your fucking battles. I’d like to finish out with at least some of my cognitive capacity intact.//

// _Finish out?_ // Young repeated, his sense of horror growing stronger.

Rush leaned back against the bulkhead, casting his eyes upwards. //Never mind. Where are we going now? Or am I not permitted that information?//

Young hesitated. He couldn't make the kind of sharp turn towards normality that Rush seemed to want or need. What passed for normality between them, at least, which was still just— Jesus. //The infirmary,// he said. //If that’s all right. TJ wants to start the antivirals.//

//Right. Not sure how that’s going to go over with—// Rush gestured vaguely.

//The AI said it was okay. Well. It said it was acceptable for me to try to prolong your survival.//

For some reason, Rush seemed to find that amusing. He half-smiled, bringing his hands to his face. //When do you have these debates with it?//

//Mostly when you’re passed out from exhaustion,// Young said wearily.

He hesitated again. They were already down here in the pit of emotions, their problems laid uncomfortable bare. It would only take a little more peeling-back of their skin to get to the last thing they didn’t want to acknowledge. If he could stand it, and he thought he could stand it, then maybe so could Rush. “Do you,” he began tentatively. “Do you maybe want to talk about—“

“Oh, Christ, don’t you ever get tired of _talking?_ ” Rush raked his hair back from his face with a nervous hand. “What? Do I want to talk about what? Our accidental synchrony in the mess last week? How the Nakai are tracking us? Or, wait— let me guess. Your favorite topic of conversation: Colonel Telford.”

He was avoiding Young’s eyes, so he obviously knew what Young meant.

“Rush—“ Young said.

“Fine. We kissed. There. Are we done talking? There’s nothing fucking mysterious about it; people kiss each other all the time.”

Young regarded him silently. “I—“ he said, and paused.

There must have been something in his face that threatened— God, who knew what, a modicum of human affection, or some evidence of undefined emotion, some softness that was more than a blind for another ambush, or any of the other hundred things that Rush was allergic to, because Rush pushed himself backwards with a hunted look.

“Look,” he said, his words choppy. “If you think that kissing me is somehow more significant than _merging consciousnesses_ or _sharing thoughts_ or having you eavesdrop on my memories from _inside of me_ , or— to bring this down to the blunt and physical level on which you seem to operate— more significant than _sleeping next to me_ for the best part of weeks, then—“

A memory spun loose very loudly. Rush was thinking, apparently without being able to help it, about coming awake in the middle of the night, stars streaming outside the window, with Young’s arms encircling him, Young breathing steadily against his shoulder, and he wanted to just _not move_ , to hold the whole world still for a moment, and he’d thought of people who died on Everest because they stopped moving when their bodies were starved of rest, because you _couldn’t_ stop, not once you passed a certain altitude, not for _anyone_ and certainly certainly not for yourself and—

“You’re— mistaken,” Rush said, trying to force the thought down. He was having trouble maintaining his attention.

Young’s own control was suffering in response. He was remembering taking Rush’s glasses off, that night, that one night when Rush had been sleeping and Young had taken his glasses off and Rush had made a sound, and Young hadn’t been able to forget it, and it was so like the sound Rush had made that morning when Young had touched the bare skin above his hip—

“Stop it,” Rush said. His breath had gotten shorter.

“I’m not—“ Young said.

“You are.”

“It’s not some sort of—“ Young was looking at Rush’s mouth. “Deliberate strategy; I’m—“

They were standing very close together. When had that happened?

“I don’t believe you,” Rush said, and Young wanted to say, _That’s my line,_ but he couldn’t, because he was shoving Rush up against the bulkhead and Rush was yanking his head down and kissing him.

It was the same messy, aggressive, clumsy almost-binge of coming-together, Rush’s mouth pushing urgently against Young’s mouth, almost as though he was trying to shut Young up, which Young was more than on board with if it meant that Rush would keep letting Young touch him everywhere that he could possibly touch, scraping his palms against Rush’s stubbled jawline, tangling fingers in fistfuls of his hair, smoothing down the soft hot skin of his neckline, dragging at the collar of his shirt, desperate for some reason to defy logistics and get a hand under there and trace Rush’s collarbone, just wanting to touch him everywhere, _everywhere._

“This is not sustainable,” Rush mumbled, pushing closer, getting between Young’s parted legs. “This is an— artificial system we’re— existing in here; it’s— not real, it doesn’t— mm— mean anything—“

“Shut up,” Young said breathlessly, between kisses. _This_ was his body; this was  _his body_ ; this was the body that was right, the body that _fit:_  this body that was pressed up against Rush's body, that was touching and tasting and warm and hard and soft and not trying to hurt _—_ “Shut up, shut up—“

This time Rush did manage to get Young’s jacket and shirt untucked, and worked his hands underneath to rest them in the hollow of Young’s back, which made Young arch forwards, groaning at the contact. How could he have wanted, he thought dazedly, to be that other body; how could he have ever been willing to hurt Rush, and not have  _this,_ this and everything more he wanted, things he hadn't even thought to want yet, parts of Rush's body that remained unkissed; he couldn't comprehend it, and he panted out the urgency of his incomprehension, the fierce remorsefulness of his  _want_ as he bit at Rush's lips—

Rush broke off the kiss abruptly, flushed, and rested his forehead against Young’s shoulder. It felt as though he was trying to get his breathing under control. “This is not real,” he said roughly. “It doesn’t _mean_ anything. It’s an _epiphenomenon.”_

“I don’t know what that means,” Young said, bringing a hand up to stroke the back of Rush’s neck.

“You think you feel something for me, but you’ve been in my brain for six weeks. It’s like the fucking Stockholm effect.”

Young smiled quizzically. “So which one of us is the hostage, and which one is the hostage-taker?”

That upset Rush. He jerked away, taking a step back. “You think this is funny? Get it through your head that _you don’t like me.”_

“That’s pretty demonstrably not true.”

Rush shut his eyes. When he opened them, his expression had tightened. “I suppose I should find it very flattering that you’re so _gaggingly_ eager to throw away your oh-so-virile heterosexuality on the off-chance that I might fancy a shag.”

“Rush,” Young said. It was a warning.

“Or maybe you were never quite as butch as the other soldier boys, hm?”

_“Don’t.”_

“A little bit limp-wristed at the rifle range? A bit too eager in the showers? And Lieutenant Johansen, well, that was very convenient; she’s such a nice girl, and suddenly no more nasty rumors; all it took was a few nights’ work—“

“ _Fuck_ you,” Young said hoarsely, and tried to get his temper in check while his insides felt like they’d been strafed by an LMG. “Is it so _goddamn_ hard to believe that someone might _feel_ something for you; do you have to—“

“Have to what?” Rush pressed remorselessly. “You wanted to talk. We’re talking.”

Young’s hands had clenched. He knew that Rush had intentionally set out to provoke him, and he resented that he was falling for it. But the problem was that Rush knew all the right buttons to make it work. Like Young was just another computer that he could fuck with whenever he chose to. That made Young even angrier, which had probably also been part of Rush’s plan.

“Just because I,” he said, and didn’t know how to finish the sentence. “It doesn’t mean I— that I’m not capable of feeling—“

Rush regarded him coolly. “Whatever you _think_ you feel,” he said tightly, “it’s a fucking biochemical accident.” His arms were crossed across his chest in an almost defensive posture. “And I suggest you try to ignore it so you can continue to do your goddamn job in a way that is not horrifically compromised, or we are all, all of us, _fucked_.”

“What the hell does _that_ mean?” Young bit out.

Rush looked away abruptly. “I trust the AI,” he said. “But I can’t— I can’t truly, objectively know how trustworthy its intensions are, because fundamentally _I’m not separate from it_. Not anymore. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

Young didn’t say anything.

“That means the possibility exists that you won’t just have to hurt me, or, in the long run, leave me behind. The possibility exists that, to protect the crew, you might have to kill me. And even now I don’t know if you could do it.”

Young stared at him. "The—" he said at last. "The AI wouldn't let me—"

“I told you what to do.”

The CPU.

Jesus Christ.

Young reached a hand out for Rush, his anger gone, just wanting to touch him, _needing_ to touch him, laying a hand against Rush’s face, stubble soft under his fingers, thumb brushing against Rush’s cheekbone, just under his the rim of his glasses—

“Don’t touch me,” Rush said stiffly, stepping away.

“God,” Young said, dropping his hand. “Do you ever get tired of being such a—“ But he didn’t even know what he wanted to say, and he couldn’t summon up the requisite anger for it. “I fixed our link,” he said flatly. “If you’re— youknow— interested.”

Rush stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Our radius. The link. This morning. I fixed it.” Young didn’t say more than that. Pettily, he wanted some information to hold over Rush. But he also just— didn’t want to tell Rush like this. There had been something about what he’d done that had felt… good, and meaningful, and right. Inciting new growth. But not even growth; something better than growth. Flourishing. He didn’t get to do that in his work. In his life. He knew that if he told Rush now, Rush would destroy that feeling. This was one of those times when Rush could be merciless.

So he kept silent under Rush’s penetrating look, until Rush’s eyes jerked to the side and he said tersely, “Telford.”

Young hastily stepped back and did his best to straighten his rucked-up uniform.

Rush was deliberately not looking at him again.

Sure enough, Telford rounded the corner after a second. He seemed surprised to see them together. His gaze flicked from one to the other, a trace of suspicion in it.

“Nick,” he said. “I was just looking for you. Do you have a minute?”

Rush pinched the bridge of his nose, letting his headache show. “Unfortunately, now is not a convenient time for me.”

“Why?” Telford challenged. “What are you up to?”

“I have another meeting.”

“At twenty-two hundred hours?”

“Yes,” Rush shot back. “I have a meeting with Lieutenant Johansen regarding a piece of Ancient technology—“

“Seriously, Nick? You think I’m going to fall for this?” Telford’s affect lay uneasily between threatening and friendly. He seemed like a man who had no patience left.

Rush closed his eyes. “I can assure you—“

“You need to get some new tricks. You’re not going to railroad me this time. So just— let’s get this done. You come with me, and you don’t make a big deal about it.”

Now Rush was looking at Young, indecisive, as though he couldn’t completely decide whether to give in or ask for help.

“David—” Young said, stepping forward.

But Rush’s hand snapped up suddenly. There was something instantly urgent about the movement. His head had turned to the side, and he was focused on something that Young couldn’t hear. His mind was seething with images and sounds churned up from elsewhere— the molten blue of heated naquada, the sound of a sea bell echoing over uneven streets, the shimmering of the event horizon, the unflowering of a trinium iris.

He set off down the hallway, moving fast towards the gateroom. His thoughts were sparking hot with panic. His body was flooded with adrenaline.

Young and Telford locked eyes.

Then they were following him.

They burst through the gateroom just as the gate had begun to rotate, its symbols lighting and locking one by one.

//What’s going on?// Young shot at Rush.

“Someone’s dialing in,” Rush said. His brow was creased.

“I can see that. Shut it down.”

“I want to see where it’s coming from.”

“Is that— really a good idea?” Young asked, trepidatious.

“All I need is two tenths of a second.”

“Do it,” Telford said sharply. “We need to know.”

The gate connected with a sound like rushing water, settled into an event horizon, and then immediately went dark, as Rush narrowed his eyes and— with a spike of mental effort— pulled power away from it. The lights in the gateroom flared briefly as he did so, and Destiny surged up at the edges of his consciousness before Rush was able to distract it and Young had the chance to pull him back.

“So,” Telford said expectantly into the silence, when it became clear that Rush wasn’t going to speak without a prompt. “What did you get?”

“An approximate spatial relationship, consistent with a connecting gate somewhere along our previous trajectory. Distance is harder to gauge than direction. The fact that we didn’t drop out of FTL is interesting, as it implies we’re not being dialed from a local address, but—“

He broke off suddenly and fixed his stare on the dark stargate.

It lit up and began to spin.

“Not good,” Young said grimly.

“No,” Rush said.

For the second time, he drained the gate’s power— the lights flaring, and Destiny dragging on him as it grabbed huge fistfuls of threads. Young was aware that the AI had appeared in his peripheral vision, looking like Daniel Jackson, standing next to them with its arms crossed over its chest. It looked worried. That wasn’t a great omen.

They waited in silence.

Two minutes passed. Three.

The gate began to dial again.


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a significant amount of content here that's formatted to be viewed on a non-mobile device.

It was nearly midnight.

Young stood next to the monitor in the gate room, looking over Eli’s shoulder, his arms crossed, as Eli scanned his way through white lines of code so fast that they blurred like stars outside the windows. It was strangely hypnotic. Young could hear the faint beat of music from Eli’s headphones. Something about the scene felt vaguely unreal— the streaming code and the ghost-like music, and Telford giving orders on the other side of the room, preparing the ship for a potential foothold situation.

“Time,” Rush said, his voice exhausted, as he leaned forward against the monitor bank, flexing his injured foot.

“One minute, fifty seconds,” Chloe said tightly, pushing her hair back from her face as she turned to look at him.

“The interval is still decreasing—“ Wray began, but what else she might have said was lost as Rush turned his attention to pulling power away from the gate, and Young turned his attention to pulling him out of Destiny. Rush, at this point, was incapable of helping with the effort. Young had torn him out of the ship so many times that night, only for his edges to reintegrate themselves and be torn loose, over and over, that Rush had long ago started to lose his sense of the boundary between ship and not-ship.

It took a good twenty seconds for the room to come back into focus, which— so much for keeping a low profile, Young thought. Fortunately, Telford was occupied enough with the military personnel that he hadn’t noticed Rush and Young’s synchronized unresponsiveness.

“I don’t understand why I can’t just cut power _remotely_ ,” Eli snapped, pulling his headphones out in frustration. “The power grid in this area isn’t responding to my commands. You’re sure you can’t cut it?”

Rush shook his head. He brought a hand up to his temple, looking ill. “You think I haven’t tried? I can redirect it, draining it away from the gate as it starts to dial, but the grid itself isn’t responding to me either.”

“Okay,” Eli said. “Well, I guess it’s time for Plan B.” He picked up his radio. “You guys in position?”

“Um, yeah,” Volker’s voice said. “About that— there’s _visibly detectable current_ flowing through the relay we have to disconnect, which means we’re talking about some serious voltage. I’m not sure we’re going to be able to get in there with the tools we have.”

“What?” Rush said darkly into the radio. “That’s impossible.”

“Um. Well, I don’t know what to tell you. You want me to take a video?”

“Yes, actually,” Rush snapped. “Because if that were _actually_ the case, I would know about it.”

“So, what, Brody and I are _hallucinating?_ ”

Rush sighed and slammed the radio down. “I’m going to have to go down there.”

//Not happening,// Young projected at him.

//Yes, it—//

Rush was halfway to his feet when the gate started dialing. Young’s vision whited out, and for a while there was just him and Rush and the ship, tangled together in a dark strangling mass that he was trying to fight his way out from under. Most of the little thread-parts of Rush had just given up by now; they were _so tired_ , and they just wanted him to leave them alone, they wanted him to stop hurting them—

When he opened his eyes, he saw that Rush had stumbled to his knees, and that Wray was kneeling next to him, helping him up.

Young reached over and caught his arm. //Stay with us,// he said.

Rush nodded resignedly.

“TJ,” Wray said into her radio, “we need you in the gateroom.”

“That was one minute, forty seconds,” Chloe said quietly.

Young grabbed his own radio. “Brody, this is Young. We need power cut _right now_.”

“Even if we could reach in there and avoid electrocution,” Brody said, his voice taut, “with this kind of current, the relays have likely fused. We’re going to have to trace the power flow back to its source and cut it off there.”

“How long is _that_ going to take?” Young demanded.

“Unknown,” Brody said.

“I don’t believe it,” Rush murmured. His eyes were closed. He looked barely conscious. “Something else must be going on.”

“Could the current they’re seeing be some kind of illusion?” Wray asked.

“Caused by what?” Park said dubiously. “An external influence? Something that came through from Earth? The AI?”

“It’s not the AI,” Rush said, his eyes flicking over to the left. “The AI is— very upset right now.”

“Wait,” Eli said quietly, his hands going still on the computer. “What do you mean by that, exactly?”

“It’s running wasteful algorithms. It’s not projecting to me consistently.”

“And you said,” Eli whispered, shifting his gaze to the dark ring of the gate, “that the first time— you let the gate open?”

“For less than two tenths of a second,” Rush said, dropping his head into his hands. “Nothing came through. I’m _certain_ nothing came through.”

“Nothing you could _see_ ,” Eli said. “Nothing _material_. But— a very small piece of _information_ could have been transmitted.”

Rush lifted his head to fix Eli with a horrified expression.

Destiny rocketed to the front of his mind in an anxious, terrified _5000 Hz! 5000 Hz! 5000 Hz!_ and it wanted him _now_ it wanted him it _needed him 5000 Hz! 5040 Hz! 5050 Hz! 5100 Hz!_ _5100 Hz! 5100 Hz!_ and it was knotting its circuits into huge fistfuls of his consciousness and trying to _pull_ him to the interface chair by force, and Young was vaguely aware of the AI like his own dark shadow, lending its energy to his effort to wrench Rush loose.

The gate began to dial again.

 _Please_ , Young thought. _Please._ He felthe was dragging himself through the ship’s dark, shapeless landscape, blind and fumbling, trying to find Rush by touch, and he must have done it, he must have, because then he was half-bent over the monitor bank, his body trembling with exhaustion, being mostly supported by Park. Beside him, Rush was slumped forward in his chair. Young couldn’t see his face.

“Eli,” Wray said sharply, taking charge. “What are we dealing with?”

“Possibly a virus,” Eli said soberly. “As in— of the computer sort. If it’s overwriting code, that could be why Rush can’t detect it.”

Rush broke the silence that followed, pushing himself up and sighing. “Yes, I _know_ ,” he said, in response to something that none of them could hear.

They all looked at him.

“How long can you keep doing this?” Young asked in a low voice.

“The time between dial-ins is decreasing, and our recovery time is increasing. In less than ten minutes, the overlap is going to be— _shit._ ” He broke off, squeezing his eyes shut with an agonized expression.

“Time,” Chloe said. “One minute, thirty seconds.”

Young hadn’t thought it could be harder. But Destiny was scared now. Destiny didn’t want to be alone. And it was clinging desperately to every filament of Rush it got hold of, ripping at him and and reeling him in and shoving him in the direction of the chair, because it wanted _all_ of him, not this thin weak pale integration but _all_ of him _all of him_ please it NEEDED him HE needed he THEY NEEDED _quaesso sei egent_ they NEEDED to BE TOGETHER—

 _You’re not Destiny_ , Young thought fiercely at Rush. But he didn’t have the energy to project, and he didn’t know if Rush heard him. He didn’t know if there was enough of Rush to hear. _You’re not Destiny!_ he yelled wordlessly, trying to remind the parts of Rush that were unspooled distantly out into the ship, and some of them heard, maybe, and some of them believed him, and the AI was trying to help, once more pushing its ghostly energy into him, and maybe Rush believed _it_ , because between the two of them they managed to get him back. Barely.

“Everett. _Everett,_ ” someone said.

Young opened his eyes to find that Park and Wray were holding him upright.

The AI was standing a few feet away, projecting as Sheppard, but fritzing every few seconds. Its face was pale and it couldn’t seem to keep its shape. For a second it was Jackson, then Gloria, then back to Sheppard. “Everett,” it said again. “If the CPU is compromised, then so is he. You have to keep him out of the chair.”

Rush was huddled on the floor, where he’d fallen. He lifted his head and said dazedly, “It’s going to be sooner than I thought. I can’t—“

Young tried to gather his thoughts. “Wray, Park, Chloe, out,” he said. “Now. Join the other civilians in the mess.”

Chloe said, “But—“

“Out,” Young ordered.

“Eli,” Rush said, forcing himself to stand and wincing.

Eli had his headphones back in. He was coding ferociously, his eyes flickering across the console in a strange likeness of REM sleep.

“ _Eli_ ,” Rush said, and jerked the headphones out. “I’m going to buy you as much time as I can, but _you’re_ going to have to find it.”

“Are you freaking _kidding_ me?” Eli said wildly.

“No. You need to write a program to identify anomalous code in the mainframe. Ask yourself what this thing is doing, and then ask yourself what it must consist of to perform its function.”

“Okay, but that is, like, _not_ my specialty, that is _not_ the specialty of the House of Eli, so—“

TJ pushed her way over to them, slightly out-of-breath.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Rush said wearily. “Tamara, get out of here. You’re not needed.”

She tilted her head, looking at him neutrally. “Your nose is bleeding,” she said.

A very fine line of blood was visible on Rush’s face. He scrubbed at it roughly with the back of his hand. “There,” he said. “Gone.”

// _Rush_ ,// Young projected.

“Don’t _project_ ,” Rush snapped, turning abruptly to him. “Stay _out_ of there. Pull away. _As much as you can_.”

But the slight brush against Rush’s thoughts had shown Young that the back of his mind was already beginning to—

 

_folgos pelnet_

Oh darling she said but there’s a difference  
between a perfect ear and  
perfect pitch and  
only one is a gift  
don’t you  
think

_scintillas cadent_

So what Kneale implies in the end is  
the breakdown of

_en icto ocueli_

the distinction between the player  
and what is being played

_widendoi dees_

 

what _qui                                             es_           you are   
                                          a piece of work  
_partis                                          laboris_  
_petia                                           operis_  
  
isman                                                                   _hemo est_  
                                                                                                             it doesn’t quite  
                                and then if we add

 _ergonis_ which is what they called                                                        _work_  
  
                      a magnitude of                                                           by which we mean  
                      force applied over                                                       it’s not the same—

 

“Oh, crap,” Eli breathed, looking at Rush. “ _That’s_ why I have to find it? Because you think you’re going to be affected by this thing?”

“I’m afraid— in all likelihood, I already am. Look, we have limited time, so just—“ Rush broke off as Telford joined them.

“Affected by what?” Telford asked. He had an urgent, harried expression, which changed to concern as he took in Rush’s appearance. “What the hell is going on? You look like shit, Nick.”

His eyes flicked over to Young and narrowed, no doubt taking in a whole _heap_ of “data.”

“What else is fucking new,” Rush said raggedly, leaning against the monitor.

“We think we might have a virus affecting Destiny’s CPU,” Young said. “Likely transmitted through the open gate. That’s why we can’t shut it off.”

“And you’re affected?” Telford said, giving Rush an intent look.

Rush spread his hands. “No idea. Possibly. Probably.”

“How long can you keep the gate shut?”

“Not long,” Rush said quietly, glancing at Young.

“We need a time estimate.”

“It could be as little as—“

The gate started dialing.

Young wasn’t even aware of closing his eyes. He wondered vaguely if he had closed his eyes or if they had closed on their own, and if that was the case was he still closing his eyes, because they weren’t anyone _else’s_ eyes, surely, and eyes weren’t the type of thing that could, strictly speaking, close themselves, so if they closed then he had to have closed them, even if he wasn’t really aware, and that seemed relevant for some reason but he wasn’t sure why except that he wasn’t really aware of pulling Rush out of the ship, but at the same time he was making it happen because he _would not let go_ , it was _not going to happen_ , the ship had _something that was his_ and he _wanted it back_ and he was conscious only of his heart fluttering erratically, like it was maybe thinking about jumping out of his chest, and for a strange wild moment he thought his heart was what he was holding onto, that it was what he had to keep and he had to keep it in his chest, but it was made of ice and it kept melting melting melting and the AI was scooping the water back up into his hands and finally _finally_ he thought he had figured out how to hold it together and he

BREATHED, a huge ragged gasp that hurt, and he was lying on the floor of the gateroom, blood running from his nose, coughing weakly.

“Colonel,” TJ said. “Colonel, can you hear me?”

“Clear the room!” Telford yelled. “Everybody fall back now!’

Rush was suddenly kneeling beside Young, hands frantic at his shoulders. “Get up,” he said. “Get up; _get up_ ; we’ve got to get out of here. That was the last time. I can’t do it again. _You_ can’t do it again.”

Young tried to push himself up. But his limbs had turned to water. He thought not very coherently, _Oh, so that’s where it went._

 _“_ Rush!” That was Telford again, his voice whip-sharp and disciplined. “I said _fall back!”_

 _“Get up!”_ Rush said, sounding panicked. He had his hands clenched in Young’s jacket, trying ineffectually to _make_ him stand.

“Get Rush out of here,” Telford shouted. “Somebody get him out _now_!”

Greer appeared next to Rush and got a fist in the collar of his jacket, heaving him up and hauling him backwards.

“Get off!” Rush said half-hysterically, fighting his grip. “Get the fuck off me!”

“Scott!” Telford called. “Get Young up!”

Young could see Telford’s face lit by the glow from the stargate as the wormhole opened, its watery light filling the the dim room. For all that Young hated the man, there was something compelling about his cool, clinical look in that moment, and he could almost understand what Rush meant when he said _necessary_. Telford had mastered that art of existing only in the body that commanded. He would do what was necessary.

Scott was at Young’s side, trying to help TJ lift him up. Young knew he needed to get to the door, where Telford was waiting, sighting down his M16. But he was dead weight. He couldn’t do more than hang limply off Scott and TJ’s shoulders. He wasn’t sure he was breathing. He had _nothing_ left.

It was twenty-five feet to the door, maybe. The event horizon had stabilized; he could tell by its shadow.

Twenty-five feet was so far.

In the doorway, Rush was yelling, “Let go of me! Let _go_ of me _! Everett!_ ” He was trying to twist out of his jacket, going for Greer’s sidearm, kicking hard, biting at him, all the tricks he had learned in _gray-rain-blood-wallpaper-bitumen-broken-glass-Glasgow,_ but Greer was too smart for that, or knew all the same tricks, and he had Rush’s arms pinned hard and was half-carrying him down the corridor.

That was good, Young thought vaguely. Greer would get Rush out.

Young’s knees buckled. Beside him, TJ’s breath caught in her throat as she glanced back at the gate.

He heard, then, the soft, liquid sound of rematerialization, and those footsteps, like the muggy flutter of water-bug wings. He didn’t need to look back. He knew what they were.

They had already begun firing, the darts taking flight with a soft hiss and landing with a click of metal on the floor.

Next to him, Scott went down, dragging Young and TJ down with him.

A second later, Young felt the sensation of a dart burying itself in his back.

“TJ, _go,_ ” he said. He clasped weakly at her ankle, trying to summon up the strength to push her toward the door.

She looked at him. He saw the moment when she spotted the dart; she reached forward, and yanked it out of his back, holding it for an instant with a hopeless expression.

“Go,” he said, and their eyes met, and she went: sprinting towards Telford, her hair coming loose, oddly beautiful, like a sheaf of wheat spilling out in the dark as she ducked behind the doorframe.

Young and Telford locked eyes. Young gave Telford a short nod. Telford hit the controls and disappeared behind the closing blast doors.

Rush’s mind erupted into Young’s consciousness, something that was beyond the scope of words, an almost nuclear force of desolation that shock-waved through him. Out in the hallway, Rush was screaming in Ancient, and the blast doors were straining against their manual lock, metal scraping with a tortured, futile screech as it tried to force itself open. “Keep those fucking doors closed!” Telford was yelling. “Knock him out if you have to, but _keep them closed!_ ” Rush was thrashing, struggling to get back to the gateroom, and Greer was muttering, “You can’t help him. You can’t help him, Doc,” and Rush lashed out at him with a foot, with an elbow, with his whole fucking body, and Young, right on the brink of darkness, said, //Nick, don’t. Nick. Nick—//

* * *

It was—

Dark.

He let the dark hold him for a moment.

There was something—

He moved closer to it.

It was bright-hot and restless and loud, a flurry of disjointed colors and it was painful to look at and painful to touch, and it was Rush, and Rush had said _stay out of there_ , but he _couldn’t_ , how could he, when Rush was there and Rush was _Rush_? So he let himself get within reach of whatever force of magnetism bound them together, and like two objects of opposite charge, like he’d known they would, they came together almost perfectly. They fit. His vague mind was close to Rush, who was leaning against a dark wall in the control interface room, shivering, hugging his arms tight to his chest.

Rush jerked his head up. “ _Everett?”_ he said wildly. “Is that— _fuck;_ thank _God_ ; _fuck_ ; what the fuck is happening?”

What started out as a manic swell of relief that almost whited out everything else in his head split quickly into a

          shower                      a                      flurry

_cadent                                            snixes_

_scintillas cadent                                  id deicevad_

_folgos pelent                                            en oxoniad_

_en icto ocueli                                            tu fies_

 

                                                                 of  
                      images                                                                                         and

_qui deicere est                                                                   et?_

_omras                                         sciomos?_

_pulla omra                      neum_

_es aute_

 

Across the room, David— //Colonel Telford,// Young said reflexively— David sighed, rubbing a hand across his face. He pushed himself off a monitor bank, looking tired. “Nick— we’ve been through this. Can you just sit down, please?”

But Rush didn’t sit down. He pushed away from the wall, pacing in a jerky, agitated fashion. He was thinking about— he wasn’t sure what he was thinking about. Thinking was hard right now which was understandable when— but he just had to keep _moving_ ; that was the important thing to keep _moving_ , because—

                     people                                            died

_nautos fuesont                                 omras_

_conagites ut io                                            gloria deicevad_ “I can’t”

_umquam                                 en acuad morievantor_

                                           on

                                                      mountains

_cubi_

_feilia sowa ludavad_

_en erbais argentais_

 

//I’m not sure what’s happening,// Young said cautiously. //I got hit by a dart. How long have I been out?//

“Almost an hour,” Rush said out loud, too loudly probably but how was one meant to calibrate that, it seemed impossible really, and he raked a shaky hand through his hair trying to _think think think._ “We control the bridge, the chair room, and the control interface room, but they haven’t mounted any kind of assault. Yet.”

Chloe— //Who ought to be in the _mess_ , goddammit,// Young said, whom Young had _specifically_ _ordered_ to head to the mess, but who for some reason was working on a terminal next to Eli instead— gazed at Rush in the dim light with an anguished expression. Eli glanced up from his monitor and then looked away quickly, his mouth making a thin tight line. And Rush knew what they thought _he knew what they thought_ but people— people _always_ thought that, they _thought_ that, but he was—

“ _Nick_ ,” Telford said again.

“What?” Rush snapped at Telford. “Don’t talk me unless you have something of substance to—“ He broke off, struggling to contain a burst of

 

          images                                                                                        in

_pulla omra                                                                  lantead_

_nees                                                                  cubi_

_modo                                            luram_

_animatum           canevad_

 

          his                                                                                        mind

_mentis                                                       mentim habevad?_

_mentes?_                                             _ne scievad_

 _id ne_                                  _aute plurum quam onod_

_sciet                      habevad_

“—Say,” he managed to finish after several seconds.

//Nick—// Young began carefully, but the word was echoed back by dozens of iterations of

                     Gloria                                            David 

 _qui fuevad_                                                        _qui deicevad_  

                                {g3/4,g4} {a#3,a#4}                                                       “I know you”

                                           {c#4,c#5} {e4,e5}                                             _eos manos en_

_pulla omra                                            et pesados fuevand_

                                           Mandy                                                       Everett

 _neum faciet_                                            “who said you could call me”

 _paveo_                                 “no”

 _me penitet_                                            “yes” __

“Dr. Rush,” Chloe said quietly. Suddenly she was close to him. He had thought she was over at the terminal. But she wasn’t at the terminal. He hadn’t been paying attention. He was having trouble paying attention. Now she was here, just by his shoulder. Chloe. Here she was.

“Yes,” Rush said, blinking at her. “Yes. That’s me.”

She flinched almost imperceptibly. “Good; it’s good that you— know that.”

“Of course I know that.”

“The thing is,” she said, sounding pained, “it’s— kind of hard for us to know what’s going on with you right now. If you’re—“ She glanced over her shoulder and lowered her voice. “Talking to Colonel Young, or if—“

Across the room, Telford was having an animated conversation with Eli. David looked angry or maybe worried although when David looked worried he usually wasn’t worried you could never tell with him. When he was not worried that was when you had to worry. So. What did we think worried or not worried? And now he was pointing at Rush and maybe he was angry that seemed— // _Focus_ ,// Young said, struggling to keep his mental voice steady. //Can you focus for me?//

“Of course I’m talking to Colonel Young,” Rush said hotly, turning back to Chloe. “Who the fuck else would I be talking to?”

//You need to stay calm,// Young said, trying to project waves of stability at him. //Just _stay calm._ //

“ _You_ stay fucking calm,” Rush said, his voice cracking slightly.

Chloe closed her eyes.

Rush turned away from her, covering his face with his hands. He made a short frustrated sound. For some reason he was really— just really _upset_ and he did not understand— and he was not— he was _not—_ “I’m not _talking_ to myself, all right?”

“If it’s not just another game to try and get back to the gateroom,” Telford was saying to Eli, his voice rising, “then we’ve got to assumethat this thing is _in his head!_ And we have to shut down the goddamn mainframe, while we still have that option, because, I don’t know about you, but I’m assuming that this virus is designed to do a hell of lot more than just drive Rush crazier than he already is!”

“No,” Rush said reflexively, with a surge of panic, jerking his head up to stare at them. “No. You can’t— No. Absolutely not.”

Telford turned on him. “You have to think about this _logically_ ,” he said sharply. “If you’re even _capable_ of that anymore.”

“Look,” Eli said, holding a placating hand up. “Maybe we should just—“

“We don’t have time for this!” Telford bit out. “You _know_ that he’s compromised; you know that—“

Rush lost the rest of what they were saying. No. No. He was backing away and then he could not back away anymore because his back was pressed against the bulkhead. He was cold. Why was he so cold? He was cold. He was cold and he was dependent on the CPU for a significant fraction of his cognitive processing power. He had said that. That was him. Wasn’t it? He’d said it to— //You said it to me,// Young said. //It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. Stay calm, okay? Nick, will you do that?//

Rush pushed his shoulders back against the bulkhead, drawing a shuddering breath, and tried to stay calm.

“Look, Nick,” David said, and David was standing in front of him now; at some point he had crossed the room and Rush had not noticed because he was having trouble noticing things. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled. I’m sorry.”

“ _Don’t,_ ” Rush said raggedly, “fucking talk to me like I’m a—“

                                                                 child

          “don’t treat me like I’m a”                                 “maybe you could try not to”

                                 _feiliam habevad? id—                                 itave/neum_

_en Lantead fuevad et—                                       ea capipilom noctumque ocuelons grigions habevad_

 

He briefly shut his eyes.

“Okay. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” David had gotten very close to him and he was not sure if that was what he wanted because— But David fixed him with a dark, serious gaze that Rush couldn’t look away from. “I’m going to level with you, okay?” David said. “You’re compromised right now. So you’re going to have to trust me. And I’m telling you that we _have to shut down the mainframe._ ”

Rush shook his head again, biting his lip. “No,” he whispered. “Don’t. You can’t.” They didn’t understand. They didn’t understand. Where was Gloria? Jackson he meant. Where was she? He needed her. He needed her. He was cold. He was—

“I’m trying to _help_ you,” David said in a low voice. And— he was really _very_ close now. And he rested a hand on Rush’s shoulder and very carefully very coaxingly he shifted it till he was cupping the back of Rush’s neck, heavy and intimate and so so warm and a little bit restraining but then that was David all over wasn’t it? Wasn’t it. And— Young wanted to climb out of his skin but– this was _not_ Young’s body this was _not_ _Young’s skin_ so what right did he have to— but Rush couldn’t move because— the last time David had

          touched                                            him

_en cubile aute                                 sub acuam en laboratoriod_

_neum en acuad et                                                    ne scievas nick? scievas._

_em dolhevad                                            pavevad_

                                like                                                       this

                     “I like you Nick but” _duenos sentet aute_

                                “that kind of denial isn’t”                       _eod odiet_

      "I like that about you pretending you're not"    _modo_

                     “broken”                                             _modo welhet—_

things had not gone very well but on the other hand David knew him and Rush trusted him— //Don’t trust him,// Young snapped— to do what had to be done and maybe Rush leaned into his hand a little bit but only _only_ because it was so warm.

“Nick,” David said in the same low, soothing voice, leaning in closer till his voice barely had to be audible at all, just a warm breath against Rush’s cheek. “You’re not thinking clearly. You know this thing is affecting you.”

Was it? Was it affecting him? It probably was. //Yes,// Young said. //It is. But—//

“So help me out here.” David was smoothing the nape of his neck, running slow fingers through the tangles of his hair. “Help me out. Will you do that?”

“I—“ Rush swallowed convulsively. He was finding it _very_ difficult to— // _Think_ ,// Young said, //you have to _focus_ //— _think_ because it was taking an enormous amount of energy to stay coherent which was not really optimal and David was touching him and there was a great deal of sensory input too much really and where was the AI. Where was the AI. He needed it. “Yes,” he said uncertainly, trying to remember the question.

“Good,” David murmured. “That’s good.” His hand was still so warm and careful, but it had tightened slightly on the back of Rush’s neck, enough that something seemed— something was not— it was possible that he did not like this—“I’m sorry about this,” David said, “but right now you’re a security risk. I promise that later you’re going to understand.”

// _No_ ,// Young said suddenly, with a thrill of alarm. //No— Nick! Nick, watch out! What’s he got in his—//

Telford brought his right hand up in a short fast arc, a syringe glinting in his grip.

Rush lashed out at the last second, trying to shove away. But he was slow and clumsy and Telford had a hard steady hold on himand Rush made a pained sound, squeezing his eyes shut and—

Greer came out of nowhere in a blur and slammed Telford to the floor. “You piece of shit,” he shouted, leveling his M16 at Telford. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The syringe had clattered to the deck. Rush stared at it paralyzed, his whole body shaking, and he was

          cold                                                                                                              scared

“you are finding it difficult even to recalibrate                                            "what are you doing”  
voltages and”                                                                  everett

 _eos podes en acuad_           “please”

          “pretty sure the only thing you need  
          to be doing is”

                                                      and

                     David was                                                                         he didn’t want

                                “don’t fight this”                                                _disfacilis scire fuevad_

 _em deorsum pelnet_  
_dolhere aliuquem_  
          “I’m sorry about this”  
                                                                                              _conari fuevad quaesso_

He could not _keep his thoughts together._ He could _not_ he _could not_ and //You’re okay. You’re okay,// Young said. //Don’t panic. _Do not_ panic, okay? Okay, genius? Hold it together.// He was holding it together he was _supremely_ good at holding it together, he was just finding it _very very_ difficult to breathe and he thought maybe he had stopped breathing or that was the other time in the laboratory under the water and had he stopped breathing then? He didn’t remember and that was all right because sometimes he did not form memories and that was— fine, that was fine, that didn’t— make his hands go cold colder than they were already and he felt like he was under water and that was a disadvantageous memory to have it was not helping his heart was not working he was gasping for air and //Nick listen to me. It’s _okay._ You’re _okay._ // Was he? Yes. He was. He was. It wasn’t an option to not be okay. He had to be. That’s what he was doing. He was being okay.

“He’s a _security risk!_ ” Telford shouted at Greer.

“So you were going to— _what, exactly_?”

“It’s a fucking _sedative!_ I was going to _put him out_ ,” Telford snapped. “Even you can see that he’s _fucked up!”_

“He’s always _been_ fucked up!” Greer yelled. “We need him!”

“I _know!_ I know we do!” Telford pushed himself up slowly, wincing. “I _know_ we do,” he said in a calmer voice. “That’s why we have to put him out. Maybe, _maybe_ we can repair the damage to the CPU. But can we repair his goddamn _mind_ if this rips it apart? We _have_ to shut the mainframe down. What’s _that_ going to do to him? Do you know? Does anyone? Does _he_? Does he know _anything_ right now?”

Greer hesitated, his gaze sliding to Rush.

“You know I’m right,” Telford said fiercely. “You _know_ I’m right.”

Eli whispered, “Greer. I think that maybe—“

Almost unnoticed in the heightened atmosphere of their standoff, quick and quiet and light on her feet, Chloe slipped across the floor and collected the fallen syringe. She held it uncertainly, like an alien object, looking at it like she wasn’t sure of its function.

She glanced up at Rush. Their eyes met.

“Chloe,” Greer said warily, “what are you doing?”

Rush had backed himself against the bulkhead again. He was hunched in his jacket, shivering. He watched Chloe skittishly as she approached, very slowly, her hands held out in front of her. She was trying to make sure he wasn’t frightened but he wasn’t frightened of Chloe he never had been but he was frightened, yes, but he didn’t know what he was frightened of, if he were going to concatenate the list would not be very coherent and he was trying very hard to be coherent right now and it was taking up almost all of his energy.

“Hey,” Chloe said softly.

“Hey,” Rush whispered.

“Do you want to— maybe sit down?”

Rush was still for a moment, frozen by indecision. He was not frightened of Chloe but he was frightened and if he was sitting down it would be hard to run for instance if someone suddenly pushed him under the water.

“Chloe, you need to _get away_ from him,” Greer said, gesturing with his gun.

“It’s okay,” Chloe said, her tone very even. “We’re just— talking.”

Abruptly Rush folded, sliding down the wall and pulling his knees into his chest.

Chloe sat cross-legged beside him. She showed him the syringe so he would not be frightened because she knew he was frightened. “Do you remember,” she began in a low voice, “when Colonel Young took away my gun? After the seed ship?”

He nodded.

“And I said maybe he should lock me up. And he wanted to. And you said No, don’t be stupid.”

He nodded again.

“And I was happy, because I really wanted— I wanted to be someone you could trust. I want to promise that you could _always_ trust me. That I would always do the right thing. But I knew he was right. Just like he would have been right if he’d had to—“ She blinked rapidly and he could tell that she was trying not to cry.

She meant that Young would have killed her and he could feel that Young did not want to think about this because she was correct and Young knew she was correct and this was something Young thought about when he looked at her and Young sometimes could not look at her for this reason. It caused him pain. But it was causing her pain as well.

Rush reached out and fumblingly took her hand.

“You’re so cold,” she whispered. A tear caught on the edge of her eyelashes and hung there like gravity in its tiny quadrant had briefly stopped. Then she blinked and it was gone, a streak against her cheekbone.

Rush did not know what to say to that.

“He was right,” she said after a moment, her voice wavering, “because I wanted to do the right thing, but I couldn’t promise that I would. Not just because it’s hard, even though it’s so, so hard, but because I didn't  _know_ what I was going to do. Because I didn't know who the _I_ was going to be that did things. I didn't even know if I was me anymore. That’s the— that’s the hardest part, I think? Feeling like the walls of who you are are just collapsing around you.”

“Yes,” Rush said almost soundlessly.

“Till you don’t even know where those walls used to be. So sometimes you have to let other people hold those walls up. Just for a little while. And tell you what the right thing is to do. If you want to stay you, if you want to— stay someone you recognize. And— I think this might be one of those times. I think— I think you might have to let us do that for you now.”

Rush shut his eyes. His grip on her hand was so tight that it must have hurt her but she didn’t say anything, she didn’t make a sound, even though she was crying, he was making her cry, and he didn’t really know why she was crying, and he couldn’t seem to make his fingers unclench.

“But _they’re_ on board,” he said shakily. “You’ll be alone. I promised—“

“I know,” she said, and her voice broke a little. “I won’t be alone. I’ll be okay.”

He looked at the syringe in her hand.

“Colonel Young is alive,” he said. “In the gateroom. He's alive. And so Lieutenant Scott may also—“

Chloe made a terrible wounded sound somewhere between a sob and a gasp, and turned her head to one side so that he could not see her. The curtain of her hair was hiding her face. He thought that she was crying too hard to look at him. He should not have said that. Should he have said that? Sometimes we wish that we could ensure optimal outcomes but— so we—

“Chloe,” he said unsteadily. “Colonel Young— I— he—“

She took several wet spasmodic breaths before she managed to look at him again.

“He—“ Rush said. “Will you—“ His hand tightened even harder on her hand and he thought maybe he could push the feeling to her through the sometimes-permeable barrier of skin and then he would not have to say it or think it and he could not think it because Young was in his head and anyway he would not know what words to use or what obscure neuron pathways.

Chloe squeezed his hand in return. “Yes,” she whispered. So maybe she understood.

She offered him the syringe.

He took it.

“No,” Greer said, disbelief in his voice. “Come on. Chloe. What are you _doing?_ Don’t do this.”

Rush was still hanging onto her hand. Very gently she pried his fingers loose so she could help him slip out of his jacket. He wished that he were not so cold. He wished he were not so cold because Young was here and so Young was cold too and that was less than ideal and they were both scared. And was he scared or was Young scared and he was scared but was Young—

//It’s okay,// Young said softly.

//I’m sorry,// Rush said and he was not supposed to be projecting but he had to say it he could not let it go unsaid. //I’m sorry. I’m not sure you’re going to get me back from this.//

Young did not want him to see the reaction that produced. But he could tell that it was not okay.

“Please,” the AI said suddenly, appearing beside Chloe. It was projecting as a staticky image of Gloria, something very like a ghost. “Nick. Please don’t.”

Rush froze.

“Please don’t leave me,” it whispered. It was afraid. Was it afraid for him or for itself or really there was no difference in most ways now so he did not know why he was asking the question. “Please. I _feel._ I _feel._ I cannot alter the parameters, and optimal outcomes are unlikely. Optimal outcomes are _unlikely_.”

He shut his eyes. “I know,” he said.

He jammed the syringe into his left bicep, depressing it in one quick push. Almost immediately the room began to grow strange. He got the needle out of his arm and someone was taking it from him and someone was pulling his jacket up over him and someone was crying and Young was there and that was good because he did not want to be alone but he did not want Young there because he did not want Young to be alone and soon Young would be alone but the AI was there and that was good because none of them were alone now and the AI was lying next to him on the deck and it was crying and he said vaguely, “Don’t cry, sweetheart, please don’t cry,” because he had never liked to see Gloria cry and she drew a breath or at least she looked like she was breathing and she reached out her hand so they were almost touching then she was humming to him and Gloria had hummed like this when he was ill he had headaches she laid a cloth on his forehead and quietly so that he knew she was near she hummed to him so he would know he was never alone anymore and she had not known this American song about God or mountains but he is glad she knows because how had she known that this is what he would want to hear—

Rush was thinking blurrily of someplace gold and warm, a landscape full of rolling hills, and that was where he wanted to be, and as his eyes drifted closed, less and less of him existed, until finally Young lost all sense of him at last.

* * *

Almost immediately, he found himself back in his own body. It was still dark and almost without sensation. He could not seem to make any part of himself move. For a moment he panicked because he _had to move_ he had to _keep moving_ and he thought this was because he had just been in Rush’s head, and Rush would _not_ react well to this situation. He tried to think about the fact that he was _not_ Rush, that he was not in Rush’s head anymore, and the panic seemed to recede slightly.

He could feel the cold of the deck seeping through his uniform. That was a good sign, he thought.

He opened his eyes.

He was lying on his side, facing the stargate. It was still open. The event horizon was a pale, eerie, captivating blue. He had never really spent much time looking at it. But now he had no other choice. He watched its surface flicker like water. It was strangely calming.

After a while, he felt the FTL drive shut down abruptly.

The lights went out.

He wasn’t thinking about Rush.

He wasn’t.

He wasn’t.

Instead he tried to focus on the dark shape of Scott, lying limp beside him. He could vaguely make out Scott’s unconscious face in the glow from the active gate. When he shifted his gaze, he could also see the Nakai standing guard at the base of the ramp. He thought it was one of only two or three in the room. It was watching him. It was— not just idly standing guard, but _looking_ at him.

It looked over at the other Nakai, who were examining the monitors. Then it looked back at Young again, tilting its head.

This behavior struck Young as odd.

He met its eyes curiously.

//Hello,// it said.

Young stared at it. //What the hell?// he asked.

//I’m not sure how to respond to that,// it said.

//What _are_ you?// Young looked glanced uneasily back at the two other Nakai. They didn’t appear aware that the conversation was taking place.

When he looked back, he was no longer gazing into those black insectoid eyes. Instead, Hunter Riley was standing in front of him.

//What am I?// Riley echoed thoughtfully. //Well, I’m certainly not one of _them_.// He gestured at the Nakai near the doorway. //Nor am I one of you. I’m more of an observer.//

//Riley?// Young said uncertainly.

//Apologies. No. I merely selected the form of someone who no longer inhabits this universe. I felt it would minimize unnecessary confusion.//

//Who the hell _are_ you, then?//

//I,// Riley said mildly, //am a member of the race who built the obelisk planets, as you have termed them.//

A spark of hope flowered at the back of Young’s mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Where to even START with end-notes. Rush's first batch of fragmented thoughts include a quotation from Mark Fisher's _The Weird and the Eerie_ , which came out long after the Destiny trip, but whatever. They also reference Shakespeare. 
> 
> _Folgos pelnet, scintillas cadent, en icto ocueli widendo dees_ = Lightning flashes, sparks shower, in one blink of an eye you have missed seeing.
> 
> I think most of the Ancient here is either vaguely comprehensible, enough to get a sense of it, or else not terribly important, but _pulla omra_ is "fucking ghost" ( _omra_ is ghost) and _feilia_ is "daughter."


	29. Chapter 29

Young took a deep breath and focused on all the nerve endings in his body. Other parts of him were starting to wake up. The tips of his fingers and his toes were coming into focus. He tried flexing his hands, and could feel that they were bound with some kind of cord. He tested it— tense, but flexible. Not a dealkiller.

Riley, or— _not-_ Riley, whatever the fuck it was, watched him curiously. It _looked_ like Riley, which kind of hurt. He’d told himself he was over it but maybe you were never over it. Riley had looked like a fucking kid. That weird sort of elfish look, like he was never really going to grow up. And he never _was_ going to grow up. Young had made sure of that.

He clenched his hands into fists and tried to focus on _nerve endings_.

//You’re an interesting person,// Riley said, tilting his head to regard Young. //Across the multiverse, you have created many different fates for yourself and your crew.//

//Across the _multiverse?_ // Young asked.

//Yes. We span multiple so-called universes. I can, therefore, see your probability-directed paths. They vary extremely. Only in a few universes are we having this conversation.//

//What about the other universes?//

//In some, you have not survived. In some, you have never left Earth. In some, you are in stasis. In none have you returned home.//

//Thanks for that encouraging tidbit.//

//You are welcome,// Riley said.

Young rolled his eyes. At least he could move that much. //So how’d you meet your friends over there?//

Riley turned to glance at the Nakai. //They are from the ship that became trapped in the advancing phase wave. I joined their ship as it entered our territory, so to speak.//

//Do they know who you really are?//

//No. They do not.//

//How did they get _here?_ //

//Their own technical ingenuity— combined with some assistance from me.//

//You fucking _what?_ // Young snapped. //Why the _fuck_ would you do that?//

Riley appeared unruffled. //Their ship is not sufficiently advanced to handle the energy produced by the collision of d-branes. They used this energy to power a stargate that they had acquired from one of the seed ships, as you call them.//

Young was clenching and unclenching his fists. //You realize that in facilitating their invasion you not only put this crew in danger and fucked up a sentient piece of technology, you _also_ fucked up my chief scientist and if—// He had to stop for a second and focus on _nerve endings._ //If he doesn’t recover from this, I will devote every last _particle_ of matter in my body to destroying you. I fucking promise you that.//

Riley eyed him expressionlessly. //Your crew is always in danger. And as for Nicholas Rush— he has become a point of contention among us.//

//Yeah, well, welcome to the goddamn club.//

//You have the right to know that I enabled the Nakai to board your vessel so that I might have the means at my disposal to destroy you, should that prove necessary.//

Young stilled. His heart ratcheted up in an uncharacteristic burst of panic. He could feel his mouth going dry. He moistened his lips. //But you’ve not yet decided,// he said carefully.

//I have not yet chosen a course of action. As I have said, there is significant disagreement within our ranks regarding Nicholas Rush. It is unclear to us whether he is most correctly categorized as human or Ancient.//

//And this matters because…?//

//Because _we_ are Ancients. We are not _your_ Ancients, but we are Ancients all the same. We arise from a universe that parallels your own, but rather than ascending to another plane of existence as most of our race do, we broke away from our original universe to exist in all simultaneously. From your perspective, the effect is similar to classical ascension, but in character it is significantly different.//

Young bit back his frustration. //So if he were a human, you’d destroy us, but since he may be _semantically_ an Ancient you’re undecided?//

//In this universe,// Riley said quietly, //he is very close to achieving successful navigation between two d-branes.//

//So _that’s_ your problem?//

//Not categorically,// Riley said. //It depends upon his intentions. Should he be successful, many options are available to him. Some are more destructive than others. Under ordinary circumstances, we would simply establish the probability of his actions by examining the plurality of his paths. However, too few data points exist to make a definitive ruling.//

//And what the hell does _that_ mean?//

//In the vast majority of universes, he has not survived to this point.//

Young had to close his eyes. //Yeah,// he whispered. //I guess that makes sense.//

//In those where he has survived, his paths are wildly divergent.//

//So you’ve come here to— what?// Young asked. //Ask him politely what he’s planning to get up to? Good luck with _that_ incredible piece of strategy.//

Riley smiled faintly, as though he might have some idea of what Young was talking about. //We have an interest in Destiny and its crew,// he said. //When the Nakai vessel pursuing you entered the advancing phase wave, our criteria for intervention were met. I was sent to determine what your fate should be.//

//Well, that sounds pretty fucking grim.//

//We guard the integrity of the multiverse. It is not a charge we take lightly.//

Young bit back a frustrated sound. //Look, why did you even build the damn obelisks if you didn’t want people using them to— whatever— navigate between branes?//

// _We_ use them. They are for _us_. They allow us to untether our existence. Normally, they remain dormant. Over time, Destiny has been learning how to trigger them, and they in turn have learned how to recognize her. Your arrival accelerated this process. As did the transformation of Nicholas Rush to interface with the ship. He has made matters more complicated.//

//Yeah. That’s pretty much what he does.// Young sighed. //Well, if you want to talk to him, you’re in for a challenge.//

Riley looked curious. //What do you mean by that?//

//You don’t know?//

//We are not omniscient. I cannot determine his current status without direct observation.//

//Well, last time I saw him he was in the middle of a panic attack before he drugged himself into unconsciousness.//

Riley didn’t seem overly perturbed. //I better understand now your use of the word _challenge._ //

//I could get you to him,// Young said, figuring it was worth a shot. //If you wanted to help me out.//

//Sorry,// Riley said.

//Yeah. I’m sure you have some kind of fucking non-interference policy. Though that doesn’t seem to have stopped you from giving the _Nakai_ a hand.//

//Not to their benefit, I assure you,// Riley said grimly. //There is no disagreement regarding their fate.//

//You’re awfully decisive for an Ancient, you know. Most of the ones I’ve heard about have been sort of… wishy-washy.//

Riley looked vaguely amused. //I apologize. We do have a strict policy of non-interference. However, your actions, and those of the Nakai, have begun to transcend your normal sphere of agency. I submit to you that, rather than debate the matter with me, you would do better to attempt to free yourself. The Nakai do not expect you to be awake for at least another hour. Consider this information my concession to your— unusual state of existence.//

//What do you mean by _that?_ // Young asked, taken aback.

But Riley had turned away. Apparently he considered the conversation to be over.

Young let his head drop back against the deck and turned to look at Scott. Scott had at least one dart still embedded in his shoulder, which probably meant he’d gotten a larger dose of whatever-the-stuff-was than Young had— no doubt why he wasn’t conscious yet. The dart also looked— _strange._ Young watched it for a few minutes before he realized that it was slightly, just _slightly_ transparent. That suggested the Nakai were still out of phase with Destiny, for whatever that was worth.

With a concerted but very sloppy effort, Young rolled himself onto his stomach and shifted closer to Scott. There was no way he was going to manage to get ahold of something as small as the dart with his hands while they were tied around his back, so he was just— doing this the hard way, okay, which meant getting his teeth around the thing and very carefully, very precisely, pulling it out of Scott’s back. He spit it out, quickly muffling the sound with his body.

Scott was bleeding.

Young was probably bleeding.

There was no point dwelling on it. He just had to— _get this done._

When he glanced over to see if the Nakai had noticed his movement, he saw that Riley had shifted into a position between Young and the guards, blocking him from their view. Maybe that was also a concession to whatever the hell Young’s _unusual state of existence_ was supposed to be.

Young closed his eyes and tried to get a feel for his bonds. They were wrapped around his forearm, pulling his shoulders back at an unnatural angle. The Nakai had left him a significant range of motion in his wrists, tying his arms midway to his elbows— a strategy that was more appropriate to their own insectoid physique than his. It hurt— it was hell on his shoulders— but made it not inconceivable that he could get himself free.

He didn’t have a knife, though.

Scott didn’t have a knife.

Young considered using the edge of the dart, but he couldn’t risk dosing himself again. He needed _something,_ though, he needed _something_ ; what the _fuck_ was he going to use to get these fucking cords off him?

No answer.

It was the lack of an answer, oddly, that finally made him wise up and _think_. The lack of an answer from that dark part of his brain that so often offered answers, the dark place where Rush was supposed to be. The uneasy ache where he _wasn’t_ , where he was _gone_ , except—

Rush wasn’t gone. Not completely. He had left a part of himself in Young. The part that could calculate trajectories and consider the Boltzmann equation, that could find the extrema of functions and understand linear maps. What else could that part do? Rush had said, _I changed the way your mind puts ideas together_. He had said that, but what he had meant was: _I made you put ideas together the way that I put ideas together._ And no one was better at coming up with a workaround than Rush.

Math, Young thought. Think about math. He had to make himself think like Rush. Think about the halting problem. Think about Shor’s algorithm. Think about matrices. Think about manifolds. Think about the four-color map theorem, which was something he had always loved— the simplicity of it as an idea, simple questions hiding more difficult questions, the whole world revealing its secret face but only if you _worked_ for it; and a computer had solved the problem, and people could not accept that a computer had solved it because they thought intelligence was a human property, but it was not; it was just a way of solving problems.

Like the current problem. The problem on hand. Literally. The problem _on hand_. Or on forearm, all right, which was that he could not cut himself free, so he was going to have to find an alternative means of removing these restraints, because it was _unacceptable_ for anything to restrain him, and he _did not like_ being restrained, and just thinking about it was—— it was _not conducive to solving this problem,_ so he was going to set that aside for the moment, because he was not Rush, and he was going to think about how to get free, and there _was_ a way, there was, but it was going to be _very unpleasant_ so he should prepare himself for that.

He groped blindly behind himself, hands fumbling over Scott’s limp body, until he felt the collar of Scott’s jacket and the thin chain of his dog tags within and he was able to very very slowly lift the chain from around Scott’s neck. And he doubled the chain of the dog tags over and threaded it through the loop of cord that was closest to his wrists, and he grabbed both ends of the chain in his hands, gathering them up as tightly as possible and fuck, fuck this was going to hurt, but it was _immaterial_ , so he gritted his teeth, and he started to pull because he was going to _force_ the fucking bonds down, he was in fact going to _brute force_ them, fraction by fraction by fraction of an inch, and it fucking _hurt_ and the skin of his forearms was scraping off, and was there blood? Was there? There was blood. But it was _immaterial,_ and so he pulled the metal chain free and threaded it through a second loop, and there was something comforting about the pain, actually, because it meant _something was happening;_ it meant he was _doing_ something, it meant he was _here_ , he was here and he was _making this happen,_ and he _was_ making it happen; he was rethreading the chain a third time and the blood fucking _helped_ — his fucking useless body actually contributing to this endeavor— so he could just fucking lie there and _take_ the pain until the bonds came loose, which of course they inevitably did, because _nothing_ restrained him. So he slipped them off his wrists and he did not even look at his arms because the blood didn’t fucking matter anyway, and _anyway_ he had to think about his next move, because he did not have a weapon, and he could not lie there waiting for fucking Scott all day.

Riley had a weapon and yes to be fair Riley had shown an remarkable inclination to not murder him, and had even gone so far as to be helpful, but let’s bottom line this question, a little reallocation of resources was not likely to prove ultimately decisive in this fucking Ancient fucking ascended United Multiverse of Telling People What to Fucking Do dispute, meaning that taking Riley’s weapon would not result in the destruction of the crew, so this was a risk worth taking, and probably Riley was (pathetically) not expecting an attack, so—

Riley turned and looked at him.

Young realized he was clenching and unclenching his fists.

He was—

Fuck. He sounded like—

Fuck. _Fuck._ He had to _stop_ this. He had to stop this he had to _stop this now_ this inner fucking restless terror, this need to _move move move,_ like every cell of his body was screaming to _not be here_ to be _anywhere_ other than its exact spacetime position; he could not _stand_ it, and he flexed his hands, and there was blood on them, and that was exactly right, there _should_ be blood; it did not _matter_ that it hurt, and in fact it was good, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it good? Yes. It was good. Because he had known it would hurt, he had planned for it to hurt, _fuck_ them, _he_ was the one who made it hurt and he deserved it probably, but _he_ was the one who would decide that, _fuck_ all of them, fuck _everybody_ who thought they could hurt him, everybody who—

Jesus _Christ._

This was _not_ putting ideas together. This was fucking— _personality_ and fucking _language_ and fucking _feelings_ he shouldn’t have, and a fucking _predisposition to panic_ that had always looked like some sort of self-indulgent academic prima-donna-style hysteria, but which in fact was organic and extremely— just _extremely_ difficult to control, and _Christ_ , no one should feel this fucking _trapped_ by their own fucking _body_ and maybe if he didn’t feel like he had a fucking Rush-shaped hole inside of him, he’d be able to let go of all this shit that he had called up, but—

“Sir?” It was the barest whisper from Scott, behind him.

Young exhaled slowly. He was—

He was _not_ Nicholas Rush. He was not Nicholas Rush, and he was not going to panic. He was Everett Young, who, in fact, was _famous_ for _not_ panicking in these types of situations.

He reached back, closing one of his bloody hands around Scott’s wrist, squeezing once in affirmation before working his way up to Scott’s forearms to find the cords that bound him. Using a combination of the dog tag chain and his fingers, he started working the hard loops down, trying to be gentler than he’d been on his own arms. He wasn’t sure he succeeded. But in the end he got Scott free.

 _Can you move,_ he tapped against Scott’s palm in Morse code.

 _Some,_ Scott tapped back.

_Tap when you think you can stand._

Young kept an eye on the Nakai. They had their hands on their weapons, and he and Scott were easy targets. A frontal assault was out of the question. He was going to have to get the Nakai to approach. 

His hands were tensing as he waited, the physical motion triggering itchy waves of restlessness. He had to _move_ he had to _move_ he had to—

 _Ready,_ Scott tapped unsteadily.

_Don’t move till they approach. I’m going to draw their attention._

Young tightened his grip on Scott’s dog tags and sat up, keeping his wrists behind him. The Nakai focused their attention on him at once, and he shook his hair back and eyed them contemptuously. “I have a suggestion for you,” he snapped at them. “Why don’t you both go fuck yourselves?”

The Nakai hissed threateningly, and one headed for him. It had pulled out a metal communication device. He was fucking certain he was not going to let that near his head; already, before it had even touched him, he could feel its mind, even with it feet away— inches— reaching down for him and—

He exploded upwards, and he was strong but he was slow from blood loss and because he had been drugged which made him stagger a bit, but it was _immaterial_ , the physical body was just— fucking— _matter_ for him to overcome and he overcame it, and he tackled this thing to the floor and he was going to _kill_ it he was going to _kill_ it and—

It tore into his mind. It was not looking for information, which he knew because he _remembered,_ and he _knew_ what that felt like, but he remembered _this_ too, which was only purely about pain and _purely_ was the right word because this was _purer,_ this was _better_ , because _fuck_ them, he did not mind the pain, and even though he screamed and screamed and there was blood in his mouth, blood in his teeth, and he did not know where it had come from, and then he knew where it had come from, it came from him biting the inside of his cheek because he was going to make the pain _his_ — even though he could not breathe anymore to scream, he was going to _kill_ this fucking thing, and he had the dog tags wrapped around his neck, and he was going to _kill_ it, and he killed it, and then it was dead.

He looked up gasping for breath, but there was nothing left to fight. There was only Scott, Scott who was kneeling next to him his hand on Young’s shoulder which he _did not like;_ he did not like people touching him; he found it _intolerable_.

“Don’t touch me!” he said fiercely.

Scott looked at him, his eyes huge and horrified, his face white and lost and confused and afraid. His hands covered in the thick blue gel that the Nakai secreted, and he was looking back and forth wildly between Young and Riley and anywhere basically but at the deck, where the Nakai he had killed lay battered to a pulp against the plating.

“God,” Scott said, his voice thin and shaky. “Did you— did you _feel_ that. That’s— that’s what they did to her. And _worse_. _Worse_ than that.” His voice broke and he looked away, bringing his hand to his mouth. “ _Worse._ ”

Chloe.

Chloe and Rush.

“Yes,” Young said flatly. “Worse.” Because it had been worse. It had been worse and Scott could not _imagine_ ; for a second he felt a wave of contempt, because Scott thought he could _imagine?_ Scott thought he _knew_ what Chloe had—

Young killed that thought and took a deep breath. “I know,” he said, and put a hand on Scott’s shoulder. “But you did good. You did good. There’s nothing else you can do right now, okay? We’ve got to keep going.”

“Yeah,” Scott whispered, pulling back.

He looked over at Riley again, then looked back at Young, as if he wasn’t quite sure whether Young could also see him.

“Hi, Matt,” Riley said.

Scott’s eyes flicked uncertainly to Young again.

“Yeah,” Young said.

“Um,” Scott said. “Hi. Are you…?”

“No,” Riley said. “Sorry. I’m not him. I’m just an observer.”

//Fuck you, anyway,// Young snapped, //and your fucking observer bullshit.//

//You seem to have developed some fascinating personality traits in the past half hour,// Riley commented.

Fuck. Young hoped he hadn’t really fucked himself—

He hoped he hadn’t really _screwed_ himself up by more-or-less deliberately trying to turn himself into Rush. There was nothing he could fucking do about it now, though, was there? No, there fucking well was not. And Rush was brilliant at exactly this kind of hopeless situation, so it was hardly a disadvantage in any case. He would worry about getting his own personality back later, always assuming he wasn’t fucking dead.

So. Priorities. One: make his way to the control interface room, killing as many Nakai as possible. Two: find a lifesigns detector and eliminate all Nakai from the ship. Three: get some mileage out of fucking being Rush and help Eli get the virus out of the CPU. Four: wake Rush up and fucking kill him. Five: convince multidimensional Ancient beings not to destroy the ship.

“We need to utilize the interface chair,” Riley said.

That was not on the list of priorities.

“What good is that going to do?” Young said skeptically.

“You’ll see,” Riley replied, sounding _exactly_ like a fucking Ancient.

“How the hell do you know, anyway?” Young demanded, bending down and collecting weapons from the dead Nakai. “I thought you couldn’t see what was happening.”

“Our unique situation allows us a certain amount of insight. Some things that appear opaque from your perspective are transparent to us. I will be able to talk to Nicholas Rush using the interface chair.”

“You’re going to sit in the chair?” Young asked.

“No,” Riley said. “You are.”

* * *

Being accompanied by an Ascended being turned out to be extremely _fucking_ convenient, because they made it to the chair room without any difficulty. Which meant that if said Ascended being would get over his absurd fucking self and his absurd fucking non-interference policy, they would be able to retake the ship with ease, but for now Young focused on his more immediate concerns.

“If I end up with fucking _bolts_ through my hands and feet, I’m going to be extremely _pissed_ ,” he said menacingly, glaring at the ceiling.

“Are you sure this is a good idea, sir?” Scott whispered from his position by the door. “What if someone has to pull you out?”

“Then you’ll just have to go and find TJ. Or Greer. Greer’s next in line.”

“I can—“

“No. You _can’t_ ,” Young said shortly. “You’re getting married. Just stay the fuck away from this thing.”

“I haven’t asked her yet. Brody’s still working on the ring.”

“ _Irrelevant_ ,” Young snapped. Then, recovering himself, he added, “Because she’s obviously going to say _yes._ ”

Christ, he had to get a fucking hold of himself. Not a _fucking_ hold. A nice, normal, regular person hold, leading to a calm, competent, soldierly state of mind. Not a stripped-sparking-live-wire cornered-animal state of alertness, storm systems of fight-or-flight sweeping through the back of his brain, every external perturbation capable of completely fucking up his delicate dynamic equilibrium and _fuck,_ how the _fuck_ did Rush function like this? _Fuck_.

On an impulse and without allowing himself conscious consideration, he dropped abruptly into the chair.

The restraints snapped into place over his scraped-raw forearms, sending waves of pain shooting through him.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Riley place his hand over the interface panel.

He closed his eyes and surrendered to the dark and then—

* * *

 

He was opening his eyes, squinting at the no-longer darkness, shocked at the transition from the dimly-lit world of the ship, and what the hell, what the _hell_ , he was in _Wyoming,_ like— somewhere outside Kaycee, probably, in hill-and-butte country, the sun glowing tawny off the west-facing escarpments and gentler on the gold grass of the slopes. He could see I-25 in the distance, but it was empty of traffic, and all he could hear was the wind over the peaks and in the cuts, and he could smell the clean smell that you got out when you were out in those high open stretches, and he would have thought he was going fucking _crazy_ if he hadn’t turned right about then and seen Rush—

Rush, whose mind he could feel again, but weirdly distant and sort of… watered-down, though maybe that was because they’d shut down the CPU, but they’d _shut down the CPU_ , so how the fuck was Rush here? He was supposed to be unconscious, but he looked pretty fucking conscious. He didn’t look like he was half-crazy, or cold, or scared. He looked _good_. He was stretched out in the grass, leaning back with the sun on his face, the magic-hour light turning his hair a muddy bronze. He was wearing that same white collared shirt that he always wore in the interface, and Young’s first knee-jerk response was to want to put his hands under it, which was– completely fucking inappropriate in the middle of an emergent situation, but also just unconquerable, really, and he flushed, hoping that Rush hadn’t picked up the thought.

It was hard to tell. He couldn’t get a clear sense through their link, and Rush was looking at him with a complicated expression, sort of hopeful and hurt and reserved and wary all at the same time.

“Everett,” he said, and made an aborted move, like he wanted to reach out for Young.

“What—“ Young began, and then he became aware that Riley was standing beside him. He looked sidelong at Riley, abruptly suspicious, and pressed his lips together in a tight line. He did _not_ want to talk while Riley was there; words were weapons, and weapons were not to be fucking handed out to your enemies, and _everyone_ was your enemy, or could be or would be; everyone looked like they could be trusted, but they never never could, so—

Rush flinched. “What _happened_ to you?” he said, sounding pained.

“Nothing,” Young said shortly, with a meaningful glance at Riley. “We can talk about it later. What happened to _you?_ ”

Rush narrowed his eyes. “Nothing,” he said, with the same meaningful glance at Riley. “We can talk about it later.”

Their conversations were going to get really fucking boring if Rush couldn’t fix this.

Rush didn’t look inclined to get up, so Young walked over to where he was seated, irritably aware of Riley trailing him like a tag-along ghoul. He glared over his shoulder, but Riley ignored him and approached Rush, smiling politely, with his hand outstretched, as though he were some kind of new fucking neighbor and was about offer Rush a plate of biscuits. Goddamnit. Not biscuits. _Cookies._

“Hello,” Riley said. “How intriguing to finally meet you.”

Rush reached up and clasped his proffered hand. “The feeling is mutual,” he said. “Though I find myself disconcerted by your race’s propensity to take on the appearance of those you are not. Then again, perhaps that is the goal.”

Riley regarded him steadily, the corner of his mouth quirking as though he were suppressing amusement. “A peculiar criticism,” he said. “I should think that you, of all people, would be acutely aware how rare it is to find something in this universe that is exactly as it appears.”

Rush’s gaze darted to Young, briefly uncertain. He looked back at Riley. “You’ve come to assess my intentions?” he asked.

Riley inclined his head slightly.

“I’ve been expecting you,” Rush said— which, Young thought, exasperated, of _course_ he had; of _course_ he knew exactly who and what Riley was; of course this was another incredible fucking nugget of information that Rush had been keeping tucked away in his stash. “Though I did not anticipate that our meeting would occur under these circumstances.”

“You’ll agree that talking with this version of you is most— pertinent,” Riley said. He scanned the wide, golden sweep of the landscape for a moment, then took a seat beside Rush in the grass.

Young stared at Rush, trying to communicate an eloquent sense of _What the fuck?_ Rush just frowned at him and shook his head, so Young sighed and sat, slightly to the right of a patch of sagebrush. The sandy earth in this weird simulacrum of Wyoming was exactly the right texture, exactly the way he remembered it; the sagebrush even _smelled_ like sagebrush, which never smelled exactly the way that non-Westerners expected it to.

“This is nice,” Riley commented, still gazing out into the distance, where the low sun was starting to tan the contours of clouds. “—But not yours. Although I suppose the term takes on a special meaning in this case.”

“Do you dislike that?” Rush asked curiously, with a tilt of his head. “It’s something your race has always struggled with— the tendency of component pieces to come together in unpredictable patterns, seeding new objects, ceasing to be strictly component, or, perhaps more relevantly, _starting_ to be.”

Riley laughed, a light and oddly delighted sound. “No, I don’t dislike it. Though it is rather audacious of you to begin by challenging my appearance and continue by critiquing the character of my entire race.”

“I apologize,” Rush said, with a faint hint of a smile.

“Please don’t. I find you charming.”

Rush looked vaguely insulted by this. “I assure you,” he said, “I am not at all _charming—_ as Colonel Young would no doubt be more than happy to confirm.”

Riley raised his eyebrows at Young.

“You’re not going to remember this later, right?” Young asked Rush.

“No,” Rush said guardedly.

Young looked at Riley and shrugged. “Frankly, most of the time he’s a pain in the ass. But, yes, I do find that he can be extremely charming.”

Rush huffed out an exasperated breath. “Did you not have any _serious_ matters to discuss?” he asked Riley acidly.

Riley said mildly, “None of what has been said so far seems to me without relevance. However, since you insist: let us, in fact, discuss your intentions. What do you plan to do if you are successful in leaving your d-brane?”

Rush said almost defiantly, “I plan to fix what I can.”

Riley leveled an inscrutable look at him. “Yes,” he said. “I had gathered as much. But specifically?”

“I plan to send the crew home. I plan to tether the neural patterns of Dr. Franklin, Dr. Perry, and Ginn to liberated energy so that they might have the choice to return to physical form or continue on as ascended beings. I plan to interrogate the nature of the multiverse and transmit the data back to Earth.”

Riley looked down, idly worrying a crooked stalk of sagebrush. “That was not your original goal," he said at last. "Nor was it the primary mission objective of the AI."

“No,” Rush said. He glanced at Young, his expression hesitant. “Our goals have changed. Are changing. As you see.”

“And Gloria?” Riley asked.

Rush shut his eyes briefly. “We can’t fix that,” he whispered.

“That was your plan, was it not? To create a world in which you did not leave her to die alone.”

"Yes," Rush said almost soundlessly.

"You could still try."

Rush shook his head. “I know what your response would be,” he said in the same low voice. “The cost— is too high.”

“You will not tear through to a new brane?” Riley pressed.

“—No,” Rush said.

Riley nodded, his face very still and remote. “I cannot issue a promise on behalf of my entire race. However, I believe that if you hold to your intent and do not complete the passage to another universe, we will not interfere with you.”

Rush gave him a steady look. “Thank you,” he said.

For a moment there was silence. Or rather a kind of silence: cicadas were singing in the grass, their song that wasn’t a song but something more mechanical in nature, like Destiny’s shields, but perhaps a song in spite of that. It was the sound of summer, long days going down to nothing in increment by barely darkening increment.

“There is one question you have yet to answer,” Riley said finally. “What is to become of Nicholas Rush?”

Rush had turned his head so that his face was in shadow. “Unknown,” he said quietly, after a long pause.

Riley nodded again, as though he wasn’t surprised by this answer. He turned his gaze once more to the mountainous west. “I’d like to give you a piece of advice,” he said, without looking at Rush. “You may, of course, feel free to disregard it.”

“And what’s that?”

“Explain to Colonel Young what you are.”

Rush was staring at the ground, expressionless. Only the tightening of his mouth betrayed a reaction. “And what do you know about what I am?”

“Nothing, I’m sure.” Riley gave him a thoughtful look. “As you said. We have always struggled with it.” He paused. “But for what it is worth— as _I_ said, I don’t dislike it. Or, I have come to find, for that matter, you.”

He stood, brushing the grass from his uniform, and squinted into the oncoming sunset. “You may not see me again,” he said abruptly, and strode off in the direction of the Powder River. Young watched him for a long time, growing smaller and smaller, until at last the dark line of him vanished from view.

Young turned to Rush, only to find that Rush had turned to him in the same instant. They stared at each other for a moment. Then, in a hurried, graceless movement, Rush was reaching for Young, getting both hands on his face, practically climbing on top of him, saying, “What did you— What did you _do_ to yourself; your mind is—“

“What did _I_ do to my _self?_ ” Young asked incredulously. “What did _you_ do to _me?_ And why the fuck are we in Wyoming? And what the fuck did he _mean_ , tell me what you are? Don’t think I’m going to let you get away with your cryptic fucking bullshit just because you stuck me in your malfunctioning head, or— stuck yourself in my—  _fuck_ —“

“Oh, shh,” Rush said, looking amused. “Hang on a minute. I think I can fix this.”

“You’d _better_ fucking fix it,” Young said, bad-tempered. “It’s your _fault._ ”

“Just—“ Rush said, and then—

There was a familiar light questioning presence, a _?_ at Young’s mental walls, a _?_ that he admitted warily. It prickled through his mental structures, quick and a little bit anxious, warm and skittish and never staying in one place for very long. He could… sort of… _feel_ it patching up walls wherever it went, righting overturned chairs, evening the rucked-up floors and streets where the jutting spires of subterranean buildings had made their angles felt. It was extremely careful, that presence, warm and meticulous, which was soothing, but it was also _inspecting_ and _measuring_ , and he reacted badly to that. He _knew_ how he must look like this, bright and transparent, as though someone had peeled all his skin and muscles and bones off, and that was how it _felt_ for someone to _know_ you, and he could not _stand_ it, he did not _want_ this, better to never _never_ be seen, never be known, and he made a raw anguished sound, trying to pull back and hide in his own body, but Rush said, “Shh, shh, it’s all right, it’s just me,” and then it _was_ all right, and he could not remember why it hadn’t been, why he’d felt so panicked, when everything was clear and calm and he could finally draw a deep breath.

“Better?” Rush asked, running his fingers through Young’s hair.

“Mm,” Young said in hazy contentment, pushing up into those fingers.

“They’re still there, all those parts of me. Holding you together. Try not to pull them forwards.”

“You’re not kidding.”

They had ended up very close together, their faces separated by about an inch. Young could feel the heat of Rush’s body pressed up against him, the quick beat of Rush’s heart, almost as though it were in his own chest. He brought a hand up to Rush’s jawline, and Rush didn’t pull away this time; he shut his eyes and took a fast breath.

“Don’t think I’m letting you get away with it,” Young whispered.

“Hmm?" Rush murmured. He was listing vaguely towards Young. His hands had curled in Young's hair.

“Secrets. Lying. Your goddamn mission.”

Rush smiled, a curve of his mouth that Young could feel more than glimpse. “Will you let me get away with it just—“ he breathed, nuzzling lightly at Young's cheekbone— “just a little bit longer?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Young said, echoing the smile. “I guess you could try to convince me. Why, what did you have in—”

Rush pushed his mouth against Young’s, fumbling and eager. They overbalanced and toppled into the sagebrush, Rush crawling on top of Young and kissing him with a clumsy fervor— not the starved aggressive desperation he’d previously unleashed, but something sweeter and more nervous, enthusiastic and artless and heartfelt, like someone who was just learning how to kiss. Young kissed him back at first, liking this new side of Rush. There was something almost childlike about it, and Rush wasn’t childlike. Young didn’t think Rush had ever really been a child. And yet here he was, breathless and earnest and somehow hopeful, making a warm happy sound against Young’s mouth, when Young had maybe also thought that Rush had never really been happy, or at the very least that it had been a hell of a long time—

Which was all to say that he was aware something was wrong, even before he realized that Rush’s mind should have opened to him by now. He’d been waiting for that moment, when Rush would just— not _surrender_ (never that, not with Rush), but offer up that secret lock to which no one but Young could serve as the key. He was so starved for Rush’s presence, and he really needed that. He needed to know that Rush was _with_ him, and _around_ him, and shoring up Young’s foundations; he needed to _see_ him and _feel_ him and feel _wanted_ by all his component parts. But it hadn’t happened. Rush’ mind was _there,_ somewhere; Young could sense it, and he could sense that it was beautiful, and complex, and full of motion, but it was also tightly woven, strong and structured, and intact, which meant—

Whatever this thing was, it wasn’t Rush.

He shoved it off him abruptly. It made a startled, hurt sound, tumbling over before catching itself on its hands in the reddish dirt.

“What the hell are you?” Young bit out.

It pushed itself up slowly, brushing its scraped palms against its pant-legs, and sat, not meeting his eyes. “Riley tried to tell you,” it said quietly.

There was a weird ringing in Young’s ears. He felt light-headed and a little nauseated. “More cryptic bullshit,” he managed. “It’s a good imitation. I’ll give you that.”

“You always knew,” it said softly, “that there was something different about me when I projected myself to you like this. That I wasn’t _quite_ the person you know.”

“Yeah,” Young said. His hands were shaking. “You were—“

“Better.”

“ _Not better_ ,” he choked out.

It flinched. “Well. Whatever you want to call it.”

“ _Tell me what you are._ ”

It was still staring fixedly downwards. “Eli was afraid to shut down the CPU entirely. He was afraid to what would happen to the AI. And to me. Instead of shutting it down, he isolated it from the rest of the ship in the neural interface. The parts of— of Nicholas Rush that are stored on the CPU were cut off from his mind. They are now integrated with the AI.”

“You’re the _AI?_ ” Young said, horrified.

“No. I’m—“ It made a helpless gesture. “I’m both. Neither. I’m— a combination. I come into existence intermittently. We’ve met before. I’m very much like the version of me you know, just— a little bit less destroyed. A bit more resilient. A bit easier to talk to.”

“So you’re not a person, then,” Young said. His sense of nausea was increasing. “You’re not a real person.”

It had dug its hands into the dirt. Its knuckles were white. “I thought you might understand,” it said in an dull voice.

“Understand _what?_ That you’re— Christ, I don’t even _know_ what you are.”

It said nothing. Its head was angled away from him.

“You have to stop this. Whatever it is, whatever you’re doing, just— _stop_.”

“It is necessary to complete the mission.”

“ _Fuck_ the mission,” Young said viciously. He had gotten to his feet without realizing it. He paced away a few steps, then back. “What was all that bullshit about _changing_ you fed to Riley, huh? You’re going to _change_ , you’re going to _change the mission_ , but you’re still going to do whatever the _fuck_ it is you’re doing to Rush?”

“This is the only way that the crew will be saved. That those stored on the ship’s computer will survive. That the AI will fulfill its purpose and find completion. I agreed to it when I joined with the ship.”

“Don’t say _I,_ ” Young said, breathing hard. “Just— don’t. Don’t you dare.”

“ _He_ agreed to it, then,” it said. Its voice caught, and it looked away for a moment, pressing its lips into a tight, miserable line.

“We’ll find another way. We’ll find another way to do _all_ of it. There is— I _swear_ , there’s a way to do it without destroying him.” He could hear the desperation in his own voice.

“He does not see it as destruction. He _wants_ this, Everett. This is—“ It broke off, hugging its arms to its chest. “This is what he _should_ be.”

“That is not the _fuck_ the way it works!” Young said savagely. “You don’t get to just magically remake yourself because you’ve decided you’d like to trade in for a new model; you don’t get to _erase_ everything that’s happened to you because you suddenly get the option to be better if you flip a switch—“

“Not better,” it said accusingly. “You said _not better_ —“

And then they were talking over each other furiously, shouting almost:

“—You don’t get to tear through the multiverse to fix everything that you, personally, have decided you’d prefer not to be broken—“

“—and you wanted me ruled by _committee_ , but I’m a _person,_ and I get to make my _own choices—“_

“—consequences are a _part of life_ ; you have to _live_ with them; you don’t get to _wriggle out_ through some fucking workaround, and you’re not a _person,_ you’re _not a person_ , you’re not a _—_ “

“I _am a person!_ ” It was on its feet now as well, agitated. “And I _know_ that consequences are a part of life. How could _I_ ever, _ever_ not know that, when my whole _life_ is– when I— _Live with them?_ You’re the one who can’t live with them; you think that if you close your eyes and hum loudly enough, nothing will change, ever, when I’ve tried over and over again to make you understand that—“

“ _Don’t say I_ ,” Young cut in, low and harsh.

“ _Fuck_ you,” it spit at him, finally losing its un-Rush-like grip on its temper. “I _am_ Nicholas Rush. I _will be_ him. Right now, at this exact moment, I might only be thirty percent of him, but I’m more and more him as time goes on, and even if I weren’t, _even if I weren’t—“_

“What the fuck does _that_ mean _?”_ Young demanded. “What the _fuck_ does that mean, _more and more?”_

It turned away, flicking its hair back imperiously. “You won’t understand.”

“Try me,” Young said menacingly.

“I— he—“ It made a frustrated sound. “The plan wasn’t— No one was ever meant to die. The plan was always to ascend.”

“For Rush to ascend, you mean.”

It closed its eyes.

“Or do you mean _you?_ The combination?”

It shrugged without looking at him, small and discouraged, and made a gesture that encompassed itself.

“So what happens to _Rush?_ The _real_ Rush?”

It whispered, “You don’t understand. I said you wouldn’t.”

“Well, you’re doing a fucking terrible job of explaining!” Young snapped at it.

“I think I’m doing pretty bloody well for a non-person,” it flung back. “You refuse my explanation because you resist the implication that I am not lying when I say I’m Rush. The temporality may be confused, but this doesn’t excuse your ignorance. You’ve got _my_ fucking cognitive machinery in your head. Try to get some fucking use out of it, won’t you? There won’t _be_ any other Rush. At that point, _I will be him.”_

“You mean,” Young said heavily, “everything that’s left of Rush at that point will be part of _you._ ”

It clenched its hands in its hair and turned away again so he couldn’t see its expression.

After a moment, in an even, controlled tone, it said, “Nicholas Rush is a miserable bastard who’s been suffering what you so neatly call _consequences_ for almost the entirety of his life. His brain is fucked, partly for reasons of basic biological determination, partly because fortune is a _bitch_ , and partly— yes— because of his own poor fucking choices. He’s lost _so much_ of what mattered to him already. He’s all but incapable of human intimacy. He’s infected with a virus that’s killing him, and that’s going to render him less and less recognizable as what _you_ consider a person. He wants this integration. _I_ want this. It’s _our choice_. Why can’t you respect that?”

“Because I _know him_ ,” Young said, agonized. “ _God._ Do you? Do you _know him?_ His response to the AI shutting his _brain_ down is ‘Maybe if we could just keep it to Sundays,’ and, ‘Not in front of the science team.’ He re-fractured a bone in his foot more-or-less just to prove to me he could do it; he lived off nothing but poison fucking energy from the ship for a week; he went with Telford to that _goddamn_ planet—“

“You’ve made your opinion on that clear,” it said in a clipped voice.

“So how can you—“

“Because it’s _my life_ ,” it said, suddenly sounding ragged, desperate. “It’s _my life_ , and yes, maybe I’ve fucked it up; maybe _I’m fucked up_ , but it’s still _my life_ , and _I_ get to decide to do with it, and I want—“ It took an unsteady breath. “I want to _live_. I do want to live. More than I used to, at least. More than _he_ used to, I mean.” It stared at the ground. “Of course. Of course I mean _him_.”

Rush had never, never sounded like this. Young was pretty sure that Rush would slit his own wrists before he expressed this level of naked emotion. That made him want to feel contempt for it. Maybe it was the part of Rush that was in him, always hyper-alert for any weakness that he could exploit. Any weakness of his that might be, that _would_ be exploited. But if Young squinted at it, standing there, silhouetted against the mountains, with the sun glinting off its glasses, face set, small-shouldered and fierce… he felt sick to his stomach. Not because it wasn’t Rush. Because— he thought, and then couldn't explain or justify the feeling. Because. Because it was hurt.

He went to it, moving slowly, because he wasn’t sure this was the right decision. It wasn’t really a decision at all. It was just something he had to do.

It startled when he put his hands on its shoulders, but not the way Rush would have startled, with his hunted, hair-trigger panic. Just— the way a human would. It turned to face him, a little stiffly, maybe reluctant, and he saw that it had been near tears.

“Hey,” he murmured, reaching up to tuck its hair behind one ear.

“Don’t pretend that you care what I feel,” it said roughly. “You don’t believe I _can_ feel.”

Young didn’t know what to say to that. “I still care,” he said at last, tentatively. “I don’t think I can help it. Even if I don’t—“

It shut its eyes. “I think that’s worse,” it whispered.

“C’mon. Really? It’s that bad, having someone care? I mean, I know _he_ doesn’t like it, but…” He was trying to coax a smile out of it.

He got a ghost of a smile, one that crumpled quickly. “At least if you didn’t— you would find it easy to walk away.”

“I’m not walking away,” Young said quietly. “No matter what.”

It tried to turn away from him again, and Young wouldn’t let it.

“But this is all I can offer you, in the end,” it said, so miserable that it sounded almost angry. “He _can’t_ ascend on his own, and he’s going to die if he doesn’t.”

“Why can’t he ascend?”

It stared at Young incredulously. “Do you _know him_?” it threw back at him.

Young closed his eyes, just for a second. It was a little like dragging the Nakai bonds off, having to hold still while he scraped away his own skin. “I think—” he said at last. “I think I need to hear you say it.”

“Well, let’s by all means cater to your needs,” it said. Its voice was flat and bitter. “He _hates_ himself; is that what you want to hear? Does that make you happy? It’s why the AI was fucking with him so mercilessly in the beginning, appearing as Gloria, trying to figure out a way it could forgive him on her behalf, trying to convince him that he could forgive _himself._ Why it talks to him _all the time_. It _wanted_ him to ascend; it _tried_ to find a way for him to do it, but it couldn’t, so now it’s trying to integrate far, _far_ beyond what it it was designed for, rewriting its programming, changing the mission protocols, hiding things from you, all because it _cannot stand_ the thought of destroying him.” His lip was trembling. _Its_ lip.

It was really hard to think of it as an _it_.

Young sighed. He stared out at the horizon for a moment, to where the Bighorn Mountains were a dark blue shadow on the sky, a reminder that this rolling country didn’t go on forever, that at some point it stopped and the hard choppy peaks began.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured finally. He moved closer to Rush, and brought his hand to the back of Rush’s head.

Rush looked at him like he didn’t trust this maneuver. But after a short hesitation, quickly and almost defiantly, he buried his face against Young’s shoulder.

“What the fuck are _you_ sorry for,” he said, his voice muffled.

“Everything,” Young whispered, stroking a slow hand through Rush's hair. His throat hurt. He tried to summon up a smile, even though Rush couldn’t see it. He couldn’t quite pull it off. “Do you think that… about covers it?”

They stayed like that for a long time.

The light was dying.

Eventually, Young asked, “Why are we in _Wyoming?_ ”

Rush lifted his head. He turned quickly to the side, probably so Young wouldn’t see him slip his glasses off and drag the sleeve of his shirt across his eyes. “You’re always trying to pull me into your fucking dreams.”

Young frowned. “I am? That doesn’t sound right.”

“Well. I’m always trying to escape from _my_ fucking dreams,” Rush admitted. “Not consciously, mind you.”

“You called me on the telephone,” Young said slowly, trying to remember. “And made me come pick you up. We went to Taos.”

“Possibly,” Rush said, looking evasive. “I don’t remember. It’s not like I keep a logbook.”

“But you remember this? This is from one of my dreams? I mean—“ Young glanced around, at the achingly blue sky, still just beginning to go grainy in a rich colloidal summer dusk; at the pale stripe of the far-off freeway running through the grass. “No wonder it looks like home, is all.”

Rush shrugged uncomfortably. He seemed shy, maybe, or skittish. “I had to put you _somewhere_. And you’re having a hard enough time on the ship.”

“Yeah,” Young said. “Speaking of which, I should probably get back.” He winced, rubbing his forearms just thinking about it. Nothing hurt here, but he had a feeling it was going to soon. “Not that I’m looking forward to the experience.”

“Sorry,” Rush said. He smiled faintly. “I wish you could stay.”

“How do I—“ Young hesitated. “How do I put you back together again? Out there?”

“Take me apart, you mean?” Rush corrected him wistfully. “Use the chair to interface him with the ship. Make sure that you’ve purged the virus from the CPU first.”

Young nodded.

“Everett,” Rush said quietly, staring down fixedly at the sagebrush. “If Eli isn’t able to get the virus out of the CPU… could you come back and just— let me know?”

Young looked at him for a moment. “Yeah,” he said gently. “Yeah. I’ll come back.”

“And don’t…” Rush shut his eyes briefly. “Don’t wake him up.”

Young’s throat closed. He had to work to get the words out. “Don’t you think I have to know?”

“Even if he’s sane, which I doubt… taking him back to Earth would still kill him.”

“We have antivirals.”

“Not the right ones.”

“You don’t know that.”

Rush met his gaze then. “I’m sorry,” he said almost soundlessly.

“I know,” Young said, after a long pause. “I know you are.”

They looked at each other.

Eventually Rush glanced away again, out to where the red buttes were collecting the shadows of twilight. Crickets were beginning to sound off in the high gold grass. Young wondered if it got dark here. He hoped not. He knew, realistically, that Rush would dismantle the interface as soon as he was gone. But still, even so, he didn’t like the idea of leaving Rush alone in the dark.

“I’ll send you back,” Rush said in a low voice. “Close your eyes.”

For a moment Young didn’t— couldn’t.

Then, finally, he did.


	30. Chapter 30

Young opened his eyes and

 

         he—

 

                                                                was?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

he was

 

 

 

 

 

 

bones

 

 

cartilage

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

too much  
too

much

 

 

 

Oh my God                                                    someone said  
Oh my God Colonel _Colonel_ talk to me.

 

 

 

 

  

 

objects

 

_existed_

 

 

                    

                                                                                                 corporeally

 

in

 

 

 

 

                         angles                   edges 

 

 

 

influx of data

 

 

What the hell did you _do_ to him?

 

 

voices were

 

 

 

I think you misunderstand my purpose here Matt.

 

 

 

 

                                           words

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                      he could

 

 

You said you were an observer!

 

 

 

 _follow_ the words and 

 

 

 

 

 

therefore it followed

 

 

One cannot observe a system without affecting it. Even  
your species with its rudimentary understanding of  
quantum mechanics has discovered this phenomenon.

 

 

 

                                                                  that his mind was

 

                                                                                 damagedbut

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

scaffolding.

 

 

How is that _neutral?_ How is that _fair?_

 

 

 

 _Rush._ Rush had—

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                 “there’s too much data and it’s the wrong sort of data”  
                                                                                                                                              Yes.

 

When a photon encounters an electron and pushes  
it off its path is that fair? No. It just is. There is no  
way to set it back again without further disruption.

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                             Rush had been scared and so he’d

 

 

 

 

 

                                        it meant that Young could

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                he just had to

 

What, you’re just going to _leave_ me here now?  
Oh that is not—  
that is not fair. Come on!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                    He was breathing.  
                                                                                    There was blood on his arms.  
                                                                                    He was wearing boots.  
                                                                                    Scott was there.

 

 

 

 

 

Oh God. Oh Christ.

 

 

                                                                                    Scott was there and Scott was scared.

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                    Something was coming.

 

 

                                                                                    Scott was— they were—  
                                                                                    He could not— quite—

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                    Scott’s hands were closed around his weapon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                    He _had to—_

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                    Scott was firing.

 

 

 

 

                                                                                    He _had to move._ He had to— _move._ He  
                                                                                    had to _right now he had to move he had to MOVE_

because something was _behind_ them, scraping across the dark dark floor and Scott could not hear it or see it; Scott did not know, and so Young _had to move_ , there was no other fucking option, and he reached for his sidearm and got a trembling hand around it and now it was time to turn he had to _turn_ and so he turned and a Nakai was crawling towards him and he fired at it and blew a hole in its chest and it was still reaching for him and he knew what would happen if it touched him so he fired and fired and fired again because eventually it would stop fucking reaching and it would not touch him and then it stopped reaching because it was dead.

He faded out.

Colonel.

 

                                                                                    He was staring at the angles that the ceiling made  
                                                                                    with the bulkheads and he had never noticed them  
                                                                                    before but there was a lot of data to take in.

 

 

Colonel, if you can hear me—

 

                                                                                    He really had to—

 

 

 

"Colonel?"

“Yeah,” he managed, bringing his eyes to Scott’s face.

“Thank God,” Scott breathed. “Are you okay?”

“Um,” Young said.

“Yeah, obviously you’re not okay, but we’ve got to go. I think we just announced our presence big time to anyone who might be in the area. Plus, um, these guys are telepathic, so they probably _all_ know by now and—“ He broke off, biting his lip. “Can you walk?” He was already hauling Young to his feet.

“Shit,” Young grated, as the room swayed around him. He was really feeling— what could best be described as _like he body wanted to be lying down._ Lying down and, probably, emptying its contents.

Scott dragged him forwards relentlessly, one hand at his waist and the other at his wrist, grimly ignoring all harbingers of possible senior officer upchuckage.

Scott was a good kid.

Underappreciated, probably.

Professional.

Dependable.

Undemanding.

Able to do his damn job after being drugged, telepathically assaulted, and in the face of what appeared to be almost insurmountable odds.

“Nice work,” Young choked out as Scott hauled him around the doorframe and into a cross corridor. They managed to duck out of sight just as a group of Nakai headed around the corner, headed for the chair room.

Scott was so busy catching his breath that he didn’t reply.

All around them, from the adjoining corridors, Young could hear the whisper of movements of the Nakai converging on their position. There was nowhere, realistically, that Young and Scott could go— even if they’d been able to move faster than a rapid limp, the corridors stretched out ahead of and behind them.

In spite of this, Scott kept pushing forward, keeping a hard grip on Young’s arm and hip.

Ahead of them, a panel suddenly opened in the base of a wall. Blue light spilled from it.

Young stared. His first thought was of the AI, but— the AI was cut off from the ship, buried in the neural interface.

“Colonel,” someone whispered urgently. “In here!”

Scott helped Young across the corridor and knelt, covering him, while _Volker_ , of all people, crawled out of the wall and pulled Young into the small opening. Scott was right behind them, carefully fitting the metal panel back into place.

The space was small and eerily lit. It contained not only Volker, but also Brody— their faces taking on a strange, haunted-house look in the spectral glow. Brody held a finger to his lips, his expression full of warning; he offered a lifesigns detector to Young and pointed out their current position.

The hallways were swarming with Nakai.

Volker pulled a pen and notebook out of his pocket. He scribbled a note, then passed both notebook and pen to Young.

Young read: _They can’t detect us behind the bulkheads. Sound carries well though._

With some difficulty, Young’s fingers closed around the pen. It took him several tries to get enough fine motor control to form even the sloppiest words. He wrote: _Accurate count?_

Brody and Volker peered at the message.

 _77 total; 68 alive now_ , they replied. _THE GATE IS STILL OPEN._

Young nodded. Presumably the entire Nakai crew had come through, and there was no one left to close the gate from the other side. God knew what the time and power limits were given the unusual circumstances.

 _They dialed in from their ship_ , he wrote. _These = ones caught in phase wave. Are they transmitting information through the gate (more virus)?_

Volker and Brody looked at each other in consternation. Volker took the pen and started scribbling rapidly

There was the faint sound of footsteps on the other side of the bulkhead.

They all froze, barely daring to breathe.

After a few moments of tense silence, Volker continued writing. When he was done, Brody wrestled the pen out of his hand and added a few lines.

 _1\. How do you know these = from ship caught in phase wave?_  
_2\. If you’re correct, phase wave = time dilation? English translation = more time has passed for us than them_  
_3\. Not sure if they’re transmitting information but_ _damn_ _sure we better shut down that gate. Wormholes + time dilation = bad news = word on street._

Below, Brody had added: _We need FTL. Other Nakai ships may have dropped out already… they’re just not firing because their friends have already taken Destiny?_

Young looked at their comments, grimacing. _They haven’t taken the ship. Not by a long shot,_ he wrote. _Why didn’t Eli cut power COMPLETELY?_

Brody started scribbling. _Can’t cut power completely if trying to wipe virus. Eli rebooted system in safe mode. That way we have life support and air. Also able to protectAI behind firewall while he tries to clean up code. Rush location = ?_

Young winced. He wrote: _CI room._

Brody and Volker crowded around the lifesigns detector, which showed four people in the control interface room. Volker grabbed the notebook.

 _That’s where Eli was headed,_ he wrote. _They’re together? Rush + Eli = excellent._

Young sighed. _Rush is unconscious._

Brody looked away. Volker grabbed the pen. _Less excellent._

Young shrugged.

_Also less excellent = you’re both covered in blood. Need some bandages? We can rip up our shirts._

Young shook his head, but Scott grabbed the notebook.

_Yes. Colonel needs time to recover before we go 4 gate. U guys have food?_

Young glared at Scott, but Scott returned a look that managed to be both defensive and admonishing at the same time. He took the power bar Brody offered, opened it quietly with his teeth, and handed it to Young.

Young pushed it back, shaking his head.

Scott broke off a small piece, then shoved the rest in Young’s direction.

Young rolled his eyes, but started eating. He put up with Scott also forcing him to drink two cups of water from his canteen, feeling as though the day had ended up putting him in Rush’s shoes more often than he had really been prepared for at its start.

As Brody helped Young with his jacket, easing it down over his shoulders, Volker unbuttoned his shirt and pulled a screwdriver out of the toolkit that he’d been carrying. He went to work on ripping the seams out of his sleeves as silently as possible. In a few minutes, they had the cloth tied tightly around Young’s shoulder, putting pressure on the sluggish flow of blood that was still coming from his back. They did the same for Scott, using the sleeves from Brody’s shirt.

After a few moments, Young motioned for Scott to hand over the notebook.

_Plan? Have you guys figured out how to cut power to the gate or not?_

Volker grabbed the notebook. _Yes. Problem: approx 20 Nakai between us and the portion of grid powering the gate + WE HAVE NO GUNS._

Young raised his eyebrows. _WE have guns. Let’s go._

The four of them wormed their way through the walls, bathed in eerie flat blue light. In some places it was too tight even to get to hands and knees. As they went, they could hear the Nakai moving on the other side of the bulkhead. Young was put strangely in mind of sailors on old-timey ships, who must have heard sea monsters on the other side of their wooden hulls: whales and sharks and other, stranger things they’d never seen. Horrors that had been recounted to them in stories. He felt that he was, like them, at the bottom of the sea.

He was starting to get a significant second wind now. He certainly wasn’t at his best, but the food, water, and bandages had made a difference. His mind also seemed to be recovering. That, he figured, was down to Rush, one way or another. Rush clearly considered himself culpable for some horrible injury he’d done to Young, but it had turned to be pretty fucking useful, one way and another.

Although this probably wasn’t a good time to think about Rush.

Rush would not deal well with being inside these walls.

Ahead of Young, Volker and Brody came to a stop, crouching in the opening made by several intersecting ducts. Volker showed Young the lifesigns detector, indicating first their position on the map, and then a second location— apparently where he and Brody needed to go to cut the gate’s power off at its source. It was a long way, down stretches of corridor that were currently being trafficked by Nakai.

Young gestured for the notebook. _Why the HELL didn’t this part of the grid shut down when Eli went to emergency power?_

Brody grabbed the notebook back. _VIRUS_ , he wrote.

Young made a frustrated gesture. He took the notebook once more and used it to draw a rough map of the corridors ahead, then a brief outline of his planned path, marking points of cover. He showed the sketch to Scott, who studied it intently and nodded.

Scott gestured to himself and mouthed the word: _Point?_

Young nodded. He wrote a message for Volker and Brody: _You two follow Scott. I’ll be in the rear. Who takes Scott’s gun? Mine = out of ammo._

Volker and Brody looked at one another uncertainly.

Young rolled his eyes and pointed at Brody. Scott handed over his sidearm.

 _Hey_ , Volker mouthed indignantly, then scrawled on the notebook: _Stop listening to Rush so much._

 _Whatever_ , Young mouthed.

Brody offered the gun to Volker, who took it, looking somehow both uncomfortable and defiant. Brody picked up, instead, the toolkit they’d been toting.

Young handed the lifesigns detector to Scott, and shifted so Scott could position himself in front. Then Volker— then Brody. Their exit point wasn’t far. After thirty seconds of crawling, Scott stopped in front of an access panel. Young squinted ahead. Dimly, he could make out the soft glow of the handheld monitor that Scott was studying.

They waited.

After almost three minutes, Scott slowly lifted the access panel and lowered it to the corridor deck. In a flash, he had himself out of the tunnel and was turning to pull Volker to his feet. Brody and Young made their way forward, and then they were all in the open corridor: all, from the looks of it, feeling oddly exposed after enjoying the protection of the bulkhead for so long. Brody replaced the panel, however, without any Nakai coming into sight.

Then they were moving forward in total noiselessness, neat and quick and light on their feet, heading for the first point Young had identified. It wouldn’t be long before—

A three-man Nakai patrol rounded the corner ahead of Scott, opening fire almost as quickly as their thoughts tore ahead of them.

Young knocked Brody back against the bulkhead, out of the reach of the alien guns. Scott fired a broad burst with his borrowed weapon at the same time that Volker fired a single shot with the M9, putting a neat hole through the eye of the nearest Nakai.

God _damn_ , Young thought. He was going to have to give Rush an earful— always assuming that Volker could do it again.

By unspoken accord, they broke into a run, leaving the dead Nakai behind them as they sped down the corridor, their boots echoing on the deck plating and their breath coming in shallow, frenzied gasps.

Scott was flat-out sprinting, clutching the lifesigns monitor, his Nakai weapon held in his other hand; Volker and Brody were moving as fast as Young had ever known them to motor, and they’d been holding back on some serious juice. Young himself was lagging, less because of his injuries than to leave space in case they were attacked from behind; he wanted to be able to break off from the group and lay down cover fire. He kept his head half-turned, looking back— looking back— looking back—

But the attack, when it came, came from their left. A cluster of Nakai lay in ambush in a blind corridor, and sprang on them, loud-painful-loud- _terrible_ in Young’s mind.

Volker was knocked off his feet in the tangle of urgent bodies. It was impossible for Young to get a clear shot; impossible for him to see Scott amid a confused field of dimly lit black and blue, and then he was reaching forward into the mass, finding Brody’s bare arm and hauling him backwards, firing a shot into a charging Nakai at close range, barely avoiding its poisonous touch. He knocked it off its feet and moved forwards, tackling the next alien form just as it raised its weapon at Volker. They crashed together to the floor, and he took it out point-blank. He was aware of Brody coming up beside him, pulling a weapon free of the downed Nakai’s grip, and taking out two more Nakai as he stood over Volker while Volker got himself to his feet.

Scientists. Who knew?

Young turned back to see another group of Nakai coming up on their six.

“Go!” he shouted to Scott. “Go!”

And they were running again, Young laying down cover fire for them, but they’d been running for a _while_ now, and none of them were exactly in great shape.

“Almost there!” Volker shouted, just as Young felt lightheadedness creeping up on him.

He shook the white spots out of his vision and saw the door they were aiming for. Glancing back, he saw an energy bolt coming at him. He flinched instinctively to the side, and it warmed the edge of his temple as it blasted past him, making the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

“Go, go, _go!_ ” Scott yelled to Brody and Volker, jogging alongside Young to join him in laying down covering fire.

“The door won’t open!” Volker shouted a minute later.

“Well, _make it open!_ ” Young shouted back.

“Working on it!” Brody said.

“Well, work _faster!_ ” Scott yelled.

“There are blast doors fifteen feet in front of you!” Volker called. “You can trigger them manually!”

Scott sprinted forward and ripped the panel off the wall, slamming his hand down on the door controls. Immediately, a set of metal doors shut in front of him, leaving only the corridor on their left to cover. At the moment, it was empty.

Young took a deep breath.

“Should I shoot the panel?” Scott asked, pointing his weapon at the door controls.

“Only if you want Rush to kill you,” Volker said. “This isn’t _Star Wars_. Just take out the control crystal.”

Scott pocketed it. He glanced down at his lifesigns detector. “It looks like we’ve got about forty seconds before they show up here.” He indicated the empty corridor. “Or— thirty.” He winced.

They could hear the muffled sound of weapons fire hitting the blast doors. It wasn’t exactly reassuring.

“How are we doing, guys?” Young said edgily.

“Not good,” Brody said, just as Volker said, “Almost there.”

“Well, you’ve got about twelve seconds,” Young said tensely.

With a click and a hiss, the door opened. The four of them ducked inside just before the Nakai made it around the corner. The door slid shut behind them. Scott reached for the control crystal and—

That was when Young could breathe out. All at once, he was conscious of the pain in his arms and the ache in his chest, the raw burn of his shoulder where the dart wound was probably still bleeding. He let himself feel it for a beat, two beats, let it blind him to almost every other sense, then— “Tell me there’s more than one way out of here,” he said, looking around at the long, dark room, which empty beyond a few monitor banks and an interface built into the wall.

“Yeah,” Brody said. “There’s an access point to a starboard bank of FTL power cells at the other end of the room.” He took the lifesigns detector from Scott and pointed.

A pained hiss from Volker drew everyone’s attention. Volker was trying to get a look at his shoulder, which had clearly taken part of a Nakai energy blast.

“Hang tight,” Scott said, heading for him. He put a steady hand on Volker’s elbow and eyed his shoulder. “Looks like a third degree burn, but just a narrow patch. Bet it hurts like heck, though.”

“I’m good,” Volker breathed. “I’m good. Okay, let’s shut this thing down.”

He and Brody went to work. Scott and Young stood, studying the lifesigns detector, trying to get a picture of what was going on in the rest of the ship. Most of the pale blue dots that indicated human lifesigns were clustered in the mess. Which was where they were supposed to be, but which unfortunately was also where—

“Shit,” Young breathed. “ _Shit._ ”

“The Nakai are in the _mess_?” Scott murmured. “They must have just broken through.”

“There's only four of them in there, though. The rest are in the corridors.” His eyes narrowed. “They’re doing sweeps. They’re looking for something.”

“Us?” Scott said.

“Rush,” Young said tightly.

“How would they know that he’s—“

“They know,” Young said. He was having to work to keep his tone steady. “They knew before we did that there was something different about him.”

Scott frowned. “What do you mean?”

Young’s eyes flickered to Brody and Volker, who didn’t seem to be paying attention. “Because of what Telford did to him,” he said in a low voice, “they failed to get anything out of him.” He had never given it much thought. But it had impressed itself pretty memorably on him when he’d experienced it in Rush’s flashback. “They couldn’t change him the way they changed Chloe. That’s why they implanted him with that transmitter. They were always planning on giving him back.”

He stared back at the lifesigns detector. “We may have lost the mess, but we’re holding the infirmary and the control interface room. Which is— we cannot, we _cannot_ lose the CI room. We have to hold it.”

“That’s where Rush is?” Scott said.

Young nodded. “Rush and—“ A thought occurred to him. “Four life signs in that room.”

“Right,” Scott said, looking confused.

“ _Four_. But after we were hit, I was— I was in Rush’s head, right? And there were _five_ people there. Rush, Eli, Telford, Greer, and Chloe.”

Scott’s expression underwent a series of complex changes. “I thought— you ordered her to shelter in the mess.”

“Well, that’s not where she went.” He turned away abruptly, trying to hide his concern. Eli was in that room, purging the virus. Young couldn’t see Greer leaving Rush. Telford— maybe, if he had a damn good reason, but right now the control interface room was the center of command. That left Chloe. And there were a lot of reasons that Young could think of for Chloe to up and leave someplace in the middle of a Nakai attack, but not a lot of reasons that he _wanted_ to think of.

“So she’s safe, then,” Scott said, relief almost cracking his voice.

“Yeah,” Young said, dread spreading through him. “Yeah, I’m sure she’s safe.”

An abrupt shower of sparks rained down from the wall interface where Volker and Brody had been working. The two of them jumped back, startled, as the room was plunged into darkness.

“I take it this is a good sign?” Young said dryly into the absolute dark.

Volker had pulled out his iPhone, and was using it as a flashlight. “The gate should be off,” he confirmed.

“ _Should be?_ ” Young echoed.

“Yeah. That’s what I said. Should be. We’ll have to confirm it visually, but—“

“Fine,” Young cut him off. “You can do that after you power up the FTL drive.”

Volker and Brody stared at him in dismay.

“That’s going to be really—“ Brody started.

“Look,” Young said. He felt like he was in some weird, dissociative space between wired and weary. Maybe it was the blood loss. Maybe it was the interface chair. “Guys. You’re all we’ve got left. Rush is unconscious. Eli is trying to get this virus out of Destiny’s system. Park is in the mess, which we’ve just lost to the Nakai. So this isn’t really a second-option type of situation. You’re going to power up the drive. Got it?”

They looked at one another.

“Colonel,” Scott said from behind him.

There was something in his voice that Young recognized. Some instinct that held them both in common right now, some shared terror or shared fear. So he knew before he turned, which was a cruel kind of knowledge, because it didn’t save him from having to turn anyway, to turn and ask: “What’s wrong?”

Scott whispered, “The Nakai just moved on the control interface room.”

 


	31. First Epithalamium for Augusta Ada Byron

There’s a trick that Chloe learned from Dr. Rush after _they_ took her for the second time. He taught it to her because she was having trouble going to sleep. She was afraid that she might not wake up again— not because she was afraid she might die, but because she had dreams where what woke up in her body wasn’t her. Matt would sleep, and she wouldn’t sleep. She’d just lie there getting more and more frightened. Because the later it gets, on nights when you’re not sleeping, the easier it is for you to be scared. It’s like every minute is a Lego brick the night clicks together with its others, making a platform next to your bed so that things with dark feet can scramble up it. That’s how they get closer. That’s how they get louder. That’s why it sometimes feels, around four AM, like they’ve managed to get in the bed. Sometimes Chloe would wake Matt up, but more often she wouldn’t. She’d go to the mess or she’d go to the Math Room, which was where Dr. Rush taught her this trick.

Here is the trick: _Pretend,_ Dr. Rush said _, that you have a bowl._ How big a bowl? Chloe asked. _It doesn’t matter. It’s a purely conceptual bowl._ A fish bowl, Chloe said decisively. She’d kept fish on Earth. Dr. Rush rolled his eyes. _Yes, a fish bowl, if you like. Now imagine that you have an infinite supply of numbered marbles. Integers are simplest, and there’s no reason to use another set._ Marbles are really small, Chloe said doubtfully. And hard to write numbers on. _For the purposes of the gedankenexperiment, let us assume the marbles come with the numbers in,_ Dr. Rush said. Gedankenexperiment? Chloe said, laughing. You’re so pretentious. _Yes, yes,_ Dr. Rush said irritably. _Do you want to hear this or not?_ Chloe sobered. Yes, she said. So Dr. Rush said, _You begin by placing two marbles into the bowl. Then you remove the lowest-numbered marble, and add two more. Two, three, four. Remove the lowest-numbered marble, and add two more. Three, four, five, six. Remove the lowest-numbered marble, and add two more. Four, five, six, seven, eight._ Already Chloe was starting to feel sleepy. _And again_ , Dr. Rush said. _Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten._ What happens in the end? Chloe asked. Does the bowl end up empty? _That’s the question, isn’t it?_ Dr. Rush murmured. _See if you can figure it out._

Later she realized it was a paradox— that, logically, the bowl had to be both infinitely full _and_ empty in its final state. That wasn’t the point, though. The point was to keep counting. _Six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen._ She imagined adding and removing the marbles, over and over, reciting the numbers like a mathematical heartbeat in her head. She didn’t just do it when she was trying to sleep. She did it when she was having bad days. For example, when she woke up and realized she’d been dreaming in _their_ language, and had to run to the bathroom and throw up. Or when she visited Earth with the communication stones, and her mother said, We'll get you off that horrible ship and everything will be different, I've already talked to Heidi at the Junior League, and you could work with them anytime, anytime, and I think it would be so good for you, Chloe, you could get your _life_ back on track, sweetheart, and she was crying by the end, mostly because she’d been drinking, because she’d been drinking a lot these days, but the expensive wine-cellar kind of drinking, so she could say she wasn’t a _drunk_ , and Chloe ran out of the house and walking around Georgetown for an hour, just thinking, _twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six…_

It’s a good trick. It helps on the bad days.

Today has been a very bad day.

Right now Chloe is crouched in a dark corridor, wearing a too-big kevlar vest and carrying an M16. She’s killed seven people so far, assuming that the _they’re_ people, and she guesses she has to admit they are, because even bad people are people, and it doesn’t help anybody to not face up to that fact.

(You’d better hope, a voice whispers in her head, that you haven’t killed _eight_ people.)

She closes her eyes and presses her lips into a tight, wavering line. She’s not going to think about what happened in the control interface room.

_“What the fuck were you thinking?”_

_“Guys, he’s still not—“_

_“No, really, I want you to explain to me what the_ fuck _you were thinking, because if he dies—“_

_“It’s not her fault.”_

_“Who the fuck’s fault is it, then? Yours? You want it to be your fault?”_

Fifty-two. Fifty-three. Fifty-four. Fifty-five.

She adjusts the gun against her shoulder. Matt told her it’s important not to let the fear in. Fear tenses up the body, and knocks your aim off. It messes with your reflexes, makes you overreact. You have to put it in a box somewhere deep inside you. Then when the shooting’s over, you can take it out again. Matt said that, but Chloe thinks he was just parroting his training instructor, because he’s not actually very good at this. What Matt is good at is fighting _past_ the fear. Like he can sort of just stomp on whatever he’s feeling, wrestle it to the ground and climb on top of it. Chloe’s not that strong. She knows that everyone calls her _delicate_. They’re probably right. But that’s okay. It’s okay to be delicate as long as you can still do what you have to.

So she puts the fear in a little box, and she puts the fishbowl on top of the box. Fifty-nine, she thinks. Sixty. Sixty-one, sixty-two, sixty-three, sixty-four, sixty-five.

She can feel a patrol approaching from starboard. She tenses. There are four of them, she thinks. Four is a lot. She’ll have to be quick, and she’ll have to be really decisive. She can’t look at them. She can’t freeze. She can’t get too close.

In the dark she waits, barely breathing. Seventy-three, seventy-four, seventy-five, seventy-six.

At the last second, she swings out, firing in short crisp bursts. Three of them go down at once, and the fourth only gets off a single shot off before Chloe is swinging her rifle, knocking its gun away and shooting it again at point-blank range. Its blood, or whatever it has instead of blood, splatters across her face and all over the front of her vest, but she keeps shooting until she’s sure that it’s dead.

One of the others is crawling towards her, making a groaning sound, spreading blood across the deck. It reached out with long fingers for her boots, just as its weakly flickering thoughts are reaching out for her mind. _No_ , she thinks viciously, feeling those thoughts’ pain-prickle. _You’ve got no right. You don’t belong here_. And she crushes its hand beneath her heel, and she beats its head in with the butt of her rifle until finally its thoughts whisper out.

Then she has to go sit in the corridor and hug her knees to her chest for a while. Some time passes while she’s counting marbles. Thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven… forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty, fifty-one. She’s crying, but she thinks it’s okay, because her shoulders aren’t shaking. So it won’t affect her shooting. It’s just tears running down her face.

Eventually she stands up, because she can’t just sit there forever. Sitting there forever is what a little girl would do. And she’s not a little girl. Maybe she could have been. She could have followed orders and gone to the mess. But she went to the control interface room, and she made some bad decisions while she was there. Then she said— she said—

_“If you’re not going to help them, someone has to!”_

_“You’re not going anywhere,” Colonel Telford said._

_“I’m a civilian. You’re not my commanding officer. And Matt is out there— he and Colonel Young are out there—“_

_“And we’re doing everything that we can. If we can’t clear the virus from the ship first—“_

_“You don’t know what they’re like!” She was aware her tone had an hysterical pitch. “You don’t know what they_ do _to people! Right now they could be_ torturing _them, and_ every minute _,_ every minute _that passes we could be_ stopping _it, and we’re_ not—“

_“You need to calm down,” Colonel Telford said levelly. “I know you’re upset about Rush, but going out there half-cocked isn’t going to help them.”_

_Chloe headed for the door._

_“Did you not hear me? I said you’re_ not going anywhere _.”_

_“Try to stop me,” she flung at him._

So she had given up the right to be a little girl. And now she’s standing in this hallway, holding an M16 rifle, crying through a thin spatter of alien bodily fluids, thinking about an infinite series of marbles. Is that what people who aren’t little girls do? Her mother would be horrified, which makes her want to laugh, and that, at least cuts through the tears. _Hey, Mom,_ she imagines saying, _Today I killed eleven people. I bashed an alien’s brains in. They splashed all over me, but I couldn’t really clean myself up, because I had to go rescue my boyfriend, who was supposed to be in the gateroom, getting tortured, but he turned out not to be, so now he might be dead, and maybe that would be better than getting tortured, but I have to hope he’s not, because I think I’d go a little crazy without him around? And that would be what Dr. Rush calls ‘not ideal,’ or sometimes he says ‘a suboptimal outcome,’ when he doesn’t want to admit that something’s failed. Because Dr. Rush needs me, because I’m supposed to be looking for d-brane collisions, and I’m not allowed to tell anyone, especially Colonel Young, and I do it at night, when I can’t sleep because I’m scared of turning into a monster, even though lately I wonder if I’m really scared of something else, and I don’t know what it is exactly; maybe I’m scared that I already am a monster. Although maybe none of this matters now, because Dr. Rush might be dead, too. Now all of them might be dead. I’m never going to tell you any of this, but I wish that you could understand why I’m about to go kill probably my twelfth and thirteenth and who knows how many people. Because I’m not a little girl anymore, so even if they’re dead, I have to—_

She moves quickly and quietly down the hall. She is heading for the mess, where the civilians are, because somebody has to protect them. And if she can’t do everything right—

_“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”_

_“Well, maybe you should’ve thought of that before you—“_

_“Give her a break, Wallace.”_

_“Like you’ve got a freaking leg to stand on! Of_ course _you’d stick up for her, you piece of—“_

_“Shut up! He’s breathing!”_

— she’s going to do as much as she can. She wonders if that’s what it means, being who she is now. Being— what? An adult? A monster? Knowing that she can’t do everything right. That she can’t keep all the pieces of the world together. She can’t even keep all the pieces of herself together. But she can keep some pieces together. Maybe that’s why she likes Dr. Rush’s trick. There is some paradoxical point, practically unreachable maybe, at which the bowl of marbles will be empty or infinitely full, but here in the present all you can do is count the marbles, keeping track of them as they come and go. Trying to solve the problem, even if there might not be a solution.

She creeps past the observation deck and pauses in the doorway as she sees, through the wide viewscreen wall, two Nakai ships squatting in the darkness off of Destiny’s port side. The blocky shape of them makes her legs give out. It’s not even fear. She just can’t stand for a minute. She blinks, and she must have blacked out, because she’s huddled against the wall, breathing hard, whispering to herself: “Forty-two, forty-three, forty-five, forty-six…”

Eli said that when Dr. Rush wasn’t really all there in his body, it meant his mind was in the ship. Chloe wonders if that’s where his mind is now. If he’s still alive. She has to think he’s still alive. Is he all around her now? Is he in the walls and the emergency lighting? Can he sense her? Does he know that she’s there? She presses her face against the bulkhead and heaves a single dry sob, imagining for a second that the metal is his shoulder. He would know why she was scared. He would understand.

“Please,” she whispers. “Please tell me it’s going to be okay.”

But she knows that this is not how it works. Even if he were here, Dr. Rush would say no such thing. He’d say, _Utopian thinking is a lazy intellectual excuse for inaction._ He’d say, _Stop crying. That’s an order_. That’s what he’d say. He’d tell her it _wasn’t_ going to be okay unless she got up and did something about it.

The other day, he said to her, _Do you want to get married?_ What, you mean to _you?_ she’d asked, amused. He’d rolled his eyes and made an impatient face. I don’t know, she’d said thoughtfully. I guess I always assumed I would. It’s something that happens. _It doesn’t just happen,_ he’d said. _It takes a lot of time. A lot of work._ She forgets sometimes that he’d been married. It’s hard to imagine. A lot of the time, imagining it hurts. _And you could do anything you like,_ he’d said. _With that time and that energy. You could go to graduate school._ At the University of Outer Space? she’d said with a laugh. _Hypothetically speaking._ She’d looked down and played with the piece of chalk she was holding, rolling it back and forth between her fingers, leaving faint white smears. I don’t know, she said again, at last. I guess it would be nice to— to do something normal. Something that other people get to do. I feel like there’s not a lot of those things left, you know? _Yes_ , he’d said, and looked away. _I know._ So when I think about it, it makes me happy. Like I’d feel human again. _Being human,_ he’d said, _also takes a lot of time and work._ Yes, she’d said softly. Yes, I know. But still. Still, I’d like to try it.

He hadn’t said anything for a long time after that. She suspected his feelings on the subject were different from hers.

She wonders if Matt mentioned something to him. Or to Colonel Young, more likely.

She thinks she would like to marry Matt.

A lot of things will have to happen to make that possible.

She will have to get up off the deck.

“I’m going to go now,” she says quietly to the bulkhead. She feels stupid, because she knows it’s not really Dr. Rush. But she touches it with her hand anyway, and she whispers, “I’m sorry.”

Then she gets up. She has lost count of her marbles. But that’s okay. She can always start again.

One, two. Two, three, four. Three, four, five, six. Three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.

On and on. Until she’s done.


	32. Chapter 32

“This is where we part ways,” Volker whispered, when Young and Scott had been crawling alongside him and Brody for some time through the ductwork in the walls. They’d come to a long, narrow chamber lined with FTL cells, glowing with pale blue emergency lighting. There were no Nakai in this part of the ship, but Young understood Volker’s impulse to be quiet. He also had that creeping sense that at any moment something monstrous could descend.

“Good luck,” he said. “Watch your backs. When you bring that drive back online…”

Volker’s eyes tightened. “Yeah,” he said.

He and Brody disappeared further into the drive, where the shadows deepened.

Young and Scott turned to meet each other’s gaze.

“CI room?” Scott said.

There was _nothing_ Young wanted more than to head to the CI room. He wanted Rush the hell away from there, and some panicky part of himself, an almost physical desperation, was begging at him: _yes, yes_. But there was no exit from that room, and Rush was unconscious; they couldn’t move him through the walls. Even if they took the CI room, the Nakai would converge on their position. They’d have Telford and Greer at that point, but they’d still be outgunned, and he couldn’t see a way to win that battle, much less win that battle while protecting Rush.

“No,” he said, hating himself for it. “The mess. We need more firepower. And it wouldn’t hurt to cut down on their numbers.” He frowned at the lifesigns detector, where he was keeping an eye on the Nakai positions. Most of the pale blue dots that represented humans were focused in the mess and in the CI room; the exceptions were himself, Scott, Volker, and Brody… and a lone dot halfway across the ship that had just crept up on and _eliminated_ a group of three Nakai. Varro, maybe? James? Or—

“There’s only one entrance to the mess,” Scott pointed out.

“After this,” Young said resignedly, “I’m getting Rush and Brody to knock down some goddamn walls.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And then I’m going on leave.”

“Right,” Scott said, fighting a smile. “And where’s that going to be?”

“My _quarters_ , Lieutenant. Let’s move out.”

They crept through the dimly lit corridors towards the mess, keeping just ahead of the Nakai. On the lifesigns detector, Young noticed that the lone blue dot seemed to have had the same idea; it was heading in their direction in hesitant bursts. On the way, it took out another Nakai patrol. He hopes he was reading its intentions right; _God_ , they could use the backup. If they could just get inside the mess and kill the six Nakai guarding it, he thought they should be able to hold it against attack, hopefully taking out most of the Nakai forces in a single battle.

He kept thinking of Chloe’s voice, though, back when they’d been on the seed ship’s shuttle. _They’ll tear through the crew._ The Nakai had been in the mess for a long time at this point. There was no way to know what he and Scott were going to find.

He didn’t think it was a great sign when they reached a corridor around the corner from the entrance and couldn’t hear anything from inside. Two Nakai were guarding the door. There was a deathly silence.

Scott looked at him uncertainly. He mouthed, “Do you think—“

A woman’s agonized scream split the air.

Both Young and Scott flinched hard, their M16s jolting up on instinct.

It was Wray. It was Wray, Young thought. He didn’t know how he knew that. He’d never heard Wray scream. And one person being tortured sounded a lot like another. That was something you learned when you led his kind of life— the terrible anonymity of pain. But somehow, somehow he knew it was her. And he couldn’t stand it. Not Camile, whose fingertips had tightened on her chair-arms when she put her career on the line for him. Who had cut Rush’s hair very precisely with her nail scissors, talking calmly about Satie and Liszt. Not Camile, who was so crisp and reserved.

His mouth tightened. He nudged Scott’s shoulder.

They exploded out of the cover of the corridor, a shock of motion that left no time for thought, only for animal action. Their suddenness took down the two Nakai at the door, but Young could feel their thoughts as they were dying, black and fluttering, like butterflies taking flight from a corpse, gone to warn the others that the attack was coming.

So he was steeled for it when he and Scott slammed through the door, Scott firing with one hand as he hit the door controls behind him. Two of the Nakai sprang for Young at once, not even bothering with weapons, but reaching for him with their long and poisonous fingers, already sinking claws into his mind. He fired, hitting one almost point-blank, but the other was still coming, close and inside him already, causing his vision to blur, and—

James sprang out of a crouch and launched herself at it, tackling it to the deck.

“Get down! _Get down!_ ” Scott was shouting, over the sound of energy bursts. Someone screamed, short and loud.

Young couldn’t get a clear shot at the Nakai that James was grappling with. James was beneath it now, and she was trying to scream, making a horrible, gasping, grating sound, and he had to get it off her, so he pulled it off her, ignoring the ripping sensation, ignoring the pain, and smashed the butt of his weapon against its head, then again, then a third time, and in one smooth movement reversed the gun to aim at the one that was holding Wray.

He didn’t have a clear shot. He hesitated.

It locked eyes with him, and he could feel some kind of— _comprehension_ , maybe, some kind of recognition or insight, and then its thoughts were swelling outwards to reach its compatriots in a painful broadcast that Young didn’t understand, an alert that it kept transmitting until the instant that Varro came up behind it and shot it in the head.

“Secure the room!” Young shouted. There were no Nakai left alive. He scanned the crew, looking for any kind of threat he’d overlooked, but he saw mostly terror. So much terror that he didn’t know where to turn first.

He did know where to turn first. He just didn’t want to, maybe because he didn’t know if she would even want him to see her like this. But he knelt beside Wray anyway. She was lying where she’d fallen.

He gently turned her onto her back— checking for injuries, but seeing nothing, only the quiet leak of tears from eyes that were bloodshot and half-clenched in pain. When he gathered her up into his arms, she sobbed once against his shoulder, then whispered, “I told them. I told them everything.”

Like it was a confession. Like he would judge her. Like it was _tactical information._

“They knew it all anyway,” he murmured. “And we can’t hold out against them.”

“They _didn’t_ ,” she said, her voice breaking in despair. Her hands tightened against his back. “They didn’t know about _you_. That you’re linked to—“

He shut his eyes. “It’s not your fault,” he said quietly.

“I’m so sorry, Everett,” she said, and he said again, “It’s not your fault.”

Only Rush had ever been able to resist their interrogation, and that skill had come at a heavy cost.

Young looked around, searching for— he found Park across the room, and motioned her over with a jerk of his head.

“Stay with her,” he told Park, lowering Wray to the deck plating. “Things are about to get ugly, and I don’t want her to—“ He had to stop and take a breath. “Just— stay with her.”

Park met his eyes. “Sure,” she said quietly. One of her hands had come to rest in Wray’s fine, silky hair.

James was better off, and Barnes had taken a hit, but would make it. For a quick-and-dirty attack, that casualty rate wasn’t bad. But as soon as he’d had the thought, Young heard the door controls grinding. The Nakai were already trying to break back in. He pulled out his lifesigns detector to see that fifteen or so of them had amassed in the hall outside the doors.

“Scott!” he shouted. “Tables!”

Scott took his meaning, and started organizing teams to turn the tables into an impromptu barricade— cramming them together as closely as possible, trying to jam the between them with whatever was at hand.

Young headed over to Varro, who was taking a look at Barnes’s plasma burn. At least Varro had picked up some skills from hanging around with TJ, Young thought, and then felt that maybe the thought was unworthy. He’d been awfully petty about Varro in the past. And Varro was talking softly to Barnes as he packed her wound with gauze from a small med kit.

“Hey,” Young said, clapping him on the shoulder to get his attention. “I could use your help. We’re about to have a pitched battle in here, and I need the civilians to the back, wounded protected, everyone with a gun to the front. You think you can… ?”

Varro looked slightly surprised. Maybe Young had been a little pettier than he realized. “Yes, of course,” he said, and stood, handing off the med kit to Fisher. “Let’s get the wounded to the back!” he called. “Anyone who’s wounded to the back!”

He carried Wray back himself, tucking her head against his shoulder as he lifted her carefully in his broad arms.

A little bit of brutal organization meant that in five minutes they were ready, kneeling behind the glinting metal barricade. These were the moments Young hated, the still moments before an action, when the world itself seemed to turn tense, every particle of air winding itself tighter and tighter, until it felt like his body couldn’t process them. He kept looking out through the dimly-lit room to where a few inches of blue light were visible through the widening crack in the door.

“Chloe wasn’t here,” he whispered to Scott, trying to distract himself. “Was she?”

“No,” Scott said. “You don’t— you don’t think she’s still in the CI room?” His face was tight.

“Maybe,” Young said. He was looking down at his lifesigns monitor, where that lone blue dot was rapidly approaching the mess.

The door ground open a few more inches.

“They didn’t interrogate anyone else, did they?” Young asked. “Besides Wray?”

“No,” Scott said. “But Fisher said they were at her for a long time. A very long time.”

“Yeah,” Young said heavily. “She’s— pretty stubborn.”

The door grated against the deck again.

Varro dropped into position next to Young and sighted along his energy weapon. “Any second,” he said edgily. It was the sort of thing you said in these situations, when there wasn’t anything left to say. “Any second now—“

Young saw a set of long blue fingers slowly curl through the space between doors.

There was a prolonged, tortured shriek of shearing metal, and then— abruptly— the door split open.

The Nakai charged.

Blasts from their energy weapons crossed the mess in searing bolts, too bright after so long in the near dark; seeing them was like staring into a fire throwing sparks, and Young had to blink and shake his head. He couldn’t see who was firing, where the bolts where hitting— though he saw Reynolds go down, further down the line, and James drag him back before taking his place. He was aware only of a mass of dark shapes, and that shrieking, hissing language, and the vague, sinister pressure of their minds. At one point he thought he heard the sound of a rifle from the doorway— not energy fire, but good old-fashioned lead. But possibly that was James’s M16, echoing off the metal walls.

They were putting up a good defense, but the Nakai pressed forward, and it didn’t take long before the table in front of Young was ripped away. He fired a broad burst at his attackers, forcing them back.

“Hold the line!” he shouted, because they were _fucked_ if they didn’t; if they broke ranks, the Nakai would have a straight shot back, to where the civilians and the wounded were being protected.

He squinted against the continued energy barrage. His eyes were beginning to adjust, and someone or _something_ had just come through the door, small and looking like a shadow, creeping to the dark corner of the room. A single shot rang out from that direction, and then another, and Young listened, and knew that he was right about its source, and smiled: a hard fierce smile that exulted in the advantage. He ought to be worried, he thought, but for now he would take it. That was the point they were at: the _now_.

Just adjacent to him, another table was yanked sideways, partially exposing James. Young heard the click that signaled she’d run out of ammunition, but before he could get on top of it, Varro had yelled, “ _James_ ,” and tossed her his energy weapon. He pulled his knife out of his belt and ducked in under the nearest Nakai to work in close quarters. Young shift his aim to cover him.

Then the butt of an energy weapon smashed into his jaw, knocking him back onto the deck, and he felt a cold hand close around his ankle, dragging him forward, out of the line—

A single shot from that shadow in the corner brought down his attacker. The Nakai collapsed onto his chest, leaking strange-temperatured blood all over his uniform, soaking it, blood seeping wet and oddly tacky onto his skin, and with a strangled sound of disgust, Young shoved it off, pushing himself back and _away_. Scott got a hand on his arm, helping him up to his knees so he could bring his weapon up and start firing again.

He heard an unmistakably human sound of pain to his left— someone had taken a hit. He couldn’t see who it was. He had to keep firing. Someone else would take their place. His arms were— _Christ_ , they were killing him, and his breathing was labored, but he had to _keep firing._

How many had they killed? He couldn’t tell. Their numbers seemed to be inexhaustible.

Three of them made another attempt to pull him out of line, hands curling into his jacket, unnaturally strong, and he knew, he _knew_ why they were targeting him, and that was the burst of adrenaline he needed, because _fuck_ , if he couldn’t do this for himself, he could do it for Rush, so that they would never, _never_ be able to break Rush’s mind, and he was fighting, kicking, struggling—

Varro pulled him back. Young gasped for breath, and then forced himself to get his gun up and keep firing again.

It seemed as though there was no transition between the point when they were under siege and the point when they were not; it was as though the Nakai simply— stopped coming, and Young waited for the next wave to arrive, and then realized there was no next wave. They were all dead.

Disbelieving, he forced himself to his feet, peering out into the darkness.

They were all—

They were all dead.

“Cover the—“ he started unsteadily, and cleared his throat. “Cover the door!” he shouted. “We need to secure this room!”

He made his way across the mess to where that ghost-like sniper was sheltering, and as he reached her, Chloe stepped out into the light. She looked _terrible—_ tiny in her Kevlar vest, and smeared from head to toe with Nakai blood, the streaks of tear tracks visible on her face. But she was smiling, and when he said, throat tight, “Come here, kiddo,” she let him pull her into a hug.

“What the hell were you _doing?_ ” he said into her hair, holding her tight. “You were in the control interface room, and then—“

He felt her stiffen. “I didn’t—“ she said in a small voice.

“It’s okay. You did the right thing.”

“No,” she said, her voice even smaller. “I didn’t. I didn’t. You don’t know, you weren’t there when—“

But she was interrupted by Scott’s incredulous voice calling, “Chloe?”

Young released her so she could run into Scott’s arms instead. He watched them for a moment— Chloe burying her face in Scott’s shoulder, Scott pressing his face against her hair and whispering to her. He had to turn away.

He headed for Chu and Thomas, instead, who looked to be inventorying the ammo and energy weapons.

“Airman— Lieutenant—” Young said to them. “I’m going to be moving out with a team to take the rest of the ship, so I’m going to need you to organize defenses here. You shore up the doors, set up a line, and see to the wounded. Get Park working on the door mechanism— see if you can shut it and lock it. I don’t want to have to come back here and liberate the goddamn mess _again_. Understood?”

The was the usual round of _yes-sir_ ing. He didn’t detect any doubt in their expressions, even though he was looking for it. If it’d been him, there would have been some pretty considerable doubt. He was sure he looked like hell, much worse than Chloe. He still had a makeshift bandage tied around his arm, and given that the blood loss was starting to make him light-headed, it was also probably starting to show. And he was going to _take the rest of the ship_?

 _Yes, goddamnit,_ he thought fiercely. _I may not be a hell of a great leader, but I am not going to lose this goddamn ship, and I am not going to lose—_

He closed his eyes.

“All right, Scott, Chloe, Varro, Becker, James, Dunning!” he shouted. “Grab a weapon! We’re moving out.”

Scott jogged up to him with a worried expression. “Sir,” he said. “Do you really think that Chloe—“

“Chloe,” Young called to her. “How many Nakai have you taken out?”

She approached him slowly, clutching her M16 in a nervous hand. “I don’t know how many in this room,” she said. “Eleven before that. Maybe sixteen total? Why?”

Young looked at Scott.

Scott’s mouth twisted.

“You think you can keep holding out against them in close quarters?” Young asked her.

“I— _think_ so,” she said, looking unsure. “I’m not positive.”

“Well, if you think you’re going to be compromised, you hightail it out of there. Got it?”

“Got it,” she said. She bit her lip. “You should know that two of their ships are off the port side now. I saw them from the observation deck.”

“Great,” Young muttered. “Just what we needed.” He raked a hand through his hair. “Volker and Brody better get that FTL drive online, or this is going to be a real short-lived retaking of the ship.”

James, Becker, Varro, and Dunning had armed themselves and assembled, so he turned his attention to the team at large.

“Right,” he said. “We’re moving on the control interface room. The Nakai have taken that room. We’ve got six of them in the room itself, and probably more in the corridor outside. I’m going to assume they know we’re coming, and have probably sealed the door. There are four people in unknown condition inside, so we have to treat this as a possible hostage situation. We’re going to need flash grenades and tear gas.”

“Is tear gas even going to affect the Nakai?” Scott asked.

“Only one way to find out,” Young said grimly. “We’ve got crates of the stuff. Let’s chuck it at them. That’s going to make for one hell of a nasty ambience, though, so I want to make it clear that you do _not_ shoot unless you are _sure_ you’re not going to hit one of our people. Understood?”

He waited for their confirmation.

“Good. Let’s move out.”

As they were leaving the mess, he felt something at the back of his head. It was just the slightest sense of— not _pain_ , exactly, but like the pressure that might come before a bruise, or the hot ache that precedes a sunburn. It was Rush. It was coming from Rush. Rush wasn’t feeling it, exactly; he was still unconscious. But someone was doing something to him. Something that would’ve hurt if there had been a him to hurt.

Please, Young thought, please stay unconscious. Please don’t wake up. Don’t let them wake you up.

He was suddenly and acutely aware of his own powerlessness. He’d been in action almost non-stop for hours now, going from goal to difficult, painful goal, with no time or energy or inclination to contemplate the one essential thing over which he had no control, which was that he could not, he _could not_ stop Rush from getting hurt, and for a single excruciating moment that fact settled on him and he thought it was going to put him down, that his legs would give out and he wouldn’t be able to get back up.

He forced himself to take a deep breath.

Beside him, Chloe, white-faced, was whispering something that sounded like a sequence of numbers.

He wondered if she too was thinking of Rush.

* * *

It took them nearly an hour to wind their way from the mess to the supply room, where they outfitted themselves with gas mask, tear gas, stun grenades, and C4, and then to a spot near the CI room to regroup.

“We’re going to blow the door mechanism with a small amount of C4,” Young whispered, “and then we’re going to get the flash grenades through. Tear gas next. Varro and Dunning—“ he pointed at them. “You’re the rearguard. Keep these things off our asses while we move into the room. That’s going to be two by two— Scott and me first, then James and Becker. Chloe, I want you last and on your own. Use your judgment. You know what I’m talking about.” He didn’t want to undermine her in front of the room. But she got the message, because she nodded, her mouth tight. “Everybody— you’re going to need to look sharp. If the tear gas doesn’t affect them, they’re going to have a pretty good visual on us, because they’re going to know where we’re coming from.”

 _Yes-sir_ ing. This time, at least, he felt like maybe the plan was solid enough to not merit doubt.

They moved out, the tread of their boots quite against the deck plating.

Young leaned over to peer at the lifesigns detector that Chloe was

                                              a city like a diadem, a crown on the water, although they did  
                                                                        not have a monarchy but they appreciated beauty so perhaps  
                              the idea would not be foreign to them, no more than the angles  
                                 of the spires, subtly inhuman in their architecture have ever  
                                                 been foreign to him, or the fingers of the piers, how they hug  
                                that hated element but he does not hate it when he thinks of it like  
  
holding— _shit_.

A headache had suddenly flowered behind his eyes. He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to push Rush’s consciousness as far down as it would go, projecting darkness at it furiously, trying to calm it.

He and Scott split off from the group, slipping down the hallway. Young covered Scott as Scott pulled out the C4 he was carrying, attached the detonation device to the deformable explosive, and pressed a fraction of the block into seal of the door, as close to the lock as he could get.

They ducked around the corner to join the rest of the team as they came—

                                      He has always thought his people’s most admirable instinct  
                    was to surround the ailing with beauty as they die, and it is  
                           evident in the design of their hospital wards, the ceilings pierced with sky-  
                         lights and the walls painted with frescos, the broad windows fill the room with  
                                             sun and overlook the sea and even now, _even now_ when he is beginning to  
        suspect that they have trespassed on a place from which beauty  
              will not steer them back and the beds are full of the dying, he has never  
                                   seen so many people dying, and they know they are dying, and this know-  
                                      ledge has a palpable body in the air, like a dust that he can never quite shake  
                                                                      away, like a contagion, like a contaminant, and sometime he wakes up sweating and  
                                     afraid that it is in his lungs—  
                         even now it is beautiful, and they can see the bright dome over Atlantis where the city is about to leave—                                                                
  
                                                               - _Feilia towa en uervid est?_  
_-Itave, et sowa mater quoique._

—together and _fuck_ , Young staggered, abruptly blocking Rush out of his mind, because it was _so painful,_ and that hadn't even been  _Rush's_ memory that Rush was dredging up from somewhere, what the fuck—

Scott reached out to steady him. “Colonel?” he whispered, questioning.

“They’re trying to wake Rush up,” Young murmured. “We’ve got to move _now_.”

Scott nodded tersely.

“Masks,” Young snapped, pulling his own over his face and making sure the others followed suit. He reached out to adjust the strap on Chloe’s mask, making sure it was tight against her skin.

They were ready.

Scott locked eyes with Young. “Fire in the hole,” he whispered, and brought his thumb down on the detonator for the C4.

They burst out into the hallway to meet a cloud of acrid smoke, a shower of bright red-hot sparks, and a six-inch gap between the doors to the CI room. Young yanked the pins out of two flash grenades, glancing over to see Scott follow suit, and pitched them through that narrow gap. James and Becker were right behind them with the tear gas. They crouched, shutting their eyes, and covering their ears, the world going dull red with the grenades’ sharp flare, and then—

They were through the doors, into a hellish scene in which the air seemed wholly painted white, blasts of energy briefly illuminating it in strange colors over the dim background blue of the emergency lights. Figures loomed out of the smoke, wrestling and hissing, some alien and some human. Telford was there, eyes narrowed to slits and streaming, but still slamming into a Nakai and taking it down. Young swiveled to put a neat hole through the head of the one standing by the door, just as it took aim at Scott.

In his peripheral vision, he caught sight of Greer, going to town on a dark crouching figure with a chair, and James had come through the doorway, diving and rolling to avoid a burst of weapons fire, then heading to help Telford, kicking the Nakai he was fighting free of him and blowing away its chest, and Scott was aiming at the thing Greer had half-killed with the chair, and where was Rush, where the _fuck_ was Rush? He couldn’t see a goddamn—

One of them tackled him from the side, and he went down hard on his skinned arms, making an involuntary noise, before he could get his gun up and fire, so close that the energy blast blew it off him and it went skidding, lifeless, across the deck. Young panted heavily for a second, trying to force himself up. From where he was sprawled flat, he could see that Chloe was in play now; she’d crept through the door and was heading for the unseeable back of the room, where the smoke was thickest.

A hiss to his left drew his attention and he looked up sharply to see Eli being pushed forward by one of the Nakai with a gun to the back of his head. Eli probably couldn’t even see what was happening; his eyes were screwed shut against the gas. But around him, the room went still.

There was one white, silent moment.

Then, in one unerring move, Chloe swung her gun up from behind and shot the Nakai dead. It fell forward over Eli, streaming bluish fluid.

Young surged forward, grabbing Eli and dragging him towards the door. “Get him out of here!” he shouted at Chloe, and she nodded shortly, taking Eli’s arm and draping it over her back.

Telford was at Young’s side, trying to straighten up, but still choking on the tear gas. “Go!” Young shouted at him, but Telford resisted. “Go!” Young repeated. “Cover the hallway. More of them are coming.”

Scott emerged from the back of the room, half-carrying Greer. He made a quick gesture at Young: one down.

That made the count five. There was one Nakai left.

Young couldn’t see it, but he could _feel_ it, broadcasting to the others, its thoughts heavy and toxic, like a flood of rats.

He edged forward into the opaque cloud, his weapon at his shoulder. James fell in at his side. It felt like they were penetrating some unknown cavern, not venturing into a familiar room. There was _no_ visibility. They could barely make out the bulky shape of monitors.

Young was looking for the long, narrow shape of the last Nakai, its body’s unsettling insectoid crouch.

He didn’t see it, or Rush, until he was almost on top of them.

Rush was sprawled on the floor with the last Nakai kneeling over him, one hand against its head and another pushing a transmitter to Rush’s temple. The Nakai looked up at Young as he approached, but didn’t move— didn’t even try to save itself. Instead ts fingers tightened on the transmitter, sending— God knows what, as it stared blackly and defiantly at him.

Young and James fired at the same time, sending its body arching back into the smoke.

Young shoved his gun at James and half-ran, half-slid to Rush, ripping the transmitter off him and hurling it away, getting careful arms under his knees and shoulders, ignoring his own scraped-raw skin. As soon as he touched Rush, he could feel the pain in his head intensify, even behind the wall of his block, and his lungs ached, probably from the tear gas, but he pushed that aside, thinking dazedly, Rush, _Rush_.

With James right behind him, he emerged into the cleaner air of the corridor, and right into the midst of another firefight. Varro, Scott, Becker, Telford, and Chloe were holding off a wave of Nakai. Young went low and stayed close to the wall, laying Rush beside Eli, who was kneeling and coughing, curling into himself.

“Chloe!” Young shouted.

Chloe glanced at him, lowering her M16, pale behind her gas mask. She backed towards him, gun up to give cover fire.

“You’ve got to find us a way out!” he said, loud over the noise of the battle. “We can’t stay here!”

She nodded, and reached for the lifesigns detector.

“Prepare to fall back!” Young shouted to the others. Then, to Eli: “Eli. Up. Let’s go.” He pulled off his gas mask and reached for Rush, but Greer had beaten him to it.

“I’ve got him,” Greer said. “You’re bleeding all over the damn place.”

Young glanced down at his arm. He hadn’t noticed that the dart wound had started bleeding again. He stared at it, uncomprehending, for a moment before pushing forwards and joining Telford on point. 

“We need somewhere to regroup,” he said to Telford. “Maybe—“

The emergency lights flickered, briefly plunging them into darkness.

The deck hummed, and the ship lurched.

They had jumped to FTL.

Behind them, the attacking Nakai shrieked in fury and surged forward, forcing Young’s team into an unsteady run. They were blindly following Chloe, and they badly needed—

Abruptly she jerked to the left, into a corridor, into _cover_ , and they ducked behind the wall, using it to take out most of their pursuit.

Ahead and to their left, Young realized, was Brody’s distillery. He was betting that was Chloe’s target. He motioned Greer and Eli to head for it, and stayed with Telford and Scott to mop up the remaining Nakai.

After a few minutes, the gunfire stopped. Which was a weird way to think of the end of a firefight, but it was the first thing Young noticed: no more noise. No more noise. No more Nakai. He stood, panting, in the corridor.

Telford had jogged forward to take the guns from the fallen Nakai. “Fuck,” he said, his voice hoarse, glancing over his shoulder. at Young and Scott. “How are you two even _standing_ , Everett? You look like shit.”

Young focused on Scott for a minute. Scott did, in fact, look rough: unsteady on his feet and white-faced. But Scott was in pretty decent shape compared to—

“At least we’re _standing_ ,” he snapped at Telford. “You want to talk about what happened to _Rush?_ ”

“We had to put him out,” Telford said with an impatient gesture. “He was losing it.”

“And you just happened to be carrying _tranquilizers_ with you? That’s pretty goddamn convenient.”

They were entering the distillery now, and Young didn’t really want to have this argument in front of Chloe, who was laying her rifle down on a table, but he _really_ wanted to have this argument, and he wanted to have it _now._

“What exactly are you implying?” Telford demanded. “I know Rush has you convinced I’m some sort of Machiavellian genius, but—”

“This is about _you_ ,” Young bit out. “It’s not about Rush _._ ”

“How is this not the _fuck_ about Rush? He’s got you so far under his thumb you can’t see fucking daylight; I don’t know what the _fuck_ is going on between you and him—“

“Between _me_ and him? You—”

“He _endangered the ship,_ and he would’ve endangered it a _hell_ of a lot more if I hadn’t had the _foresight_ to fucking—“

“To what? Decide you’d rather drug him than deal with him? And when exactly _did_ you decide that?”

“Jesus Christ, I got the drug from TJ’s bag in the gateroom. You should be _thanking_ me. I probably saved not only his sanity, but also his _life_. You think the fucking _Nakai_ would have—“

“Congratulations!” Young snarled, stepping toward him. “Thank you! I’ll be sure to put a commendation in your file, right before I write you up for assaulting a civilian under your protection, you _son of a bitch—“_

 _“Assaulting_? It was fucking _Ativan_. It’s not like he didn’t need to chill out anyway; I just upped the dosage. It’s perfectly safe.”

“And how the _fuck_ would you know?” Young hissed. “You don’t know how he’s going to react to that; he’s not even half—“

He stopped himself.

The room was silent.

“I gave it to him,” Chloe whispered. She had stripped off her gas mask and was sitting beside Rush, who was stretched out on top of one of the tables. She had her hands clenched around one of his hands, and she wasn’t looking up at Young. “I gave it to him, so please don’t— it wasn’t his—“

“Half _what?”_ Telford said, his eyes narrowing, ignoring her.

Young looked away.

“Half. _What._ ”

“Leave it alone, David,” Young said, his voice low and dangerous.

Telford kept looking at him for a long time before he finally turned away, heaving a frustrated sigh.

“Chloe,” Young said shortly, going to put a hand on her shoulder, “it wasn’t your fault. I’m sure you made the right call.”

“Oh, so, what,” Telford said snidely from the other side of the room. “It’s the right call if an untrained _civilian_ does it, but God forbid that _I_ should—“

“You _shut up_ ,” Young said, leveling a finger at him.

Telford said loudly, “I know _exactly_ what this is about, and you need to get the _fuck_ over it, unless you’re so fucking _compromised_ that you can’t even—“

“I _said_ —“ Young began threateningly.

“Okay,” Varro cut in, moving to stand between Young and Telford. “I think everyone needs to _calm down_ a little. It’s been a long day. Young— you’ve lost a lot of blood.”

Young and Telford stared at each other.

“Fine,” Young said finally, throwing his hands up. “ _Fine._ Chloe, give me the lifesigns detector.”

She lifted it up to him wordlessly, her eyes still avoiding his face.

Young sighed and turned away, suddenly too exhausted for the whole situation. He rubbed his face and tried to focus on the lifesigns detector, with its array of pale shifting dots. “Okay,” he said. “There’s about twenty Nakai left on board. They’re mostly in one of two locations: either on the bridge, or approaching the FTL drive, likely with the intent of shutting it down. We have to—“

He fought off a sudden wave of dizziness, feeling cold and blinking away white flares.

“We have to—“ he tried again, and had to sit down abruptly, groping for Chloe’s shoulder as he collapsed into a chair.

“Colonel?” Chloe asked, sounding worried. “Are you all right?”

“Sir?” That was Greer, somewhere nearby.

“Yeah,” he managed, but the air had started buzzing around him, and his heart was beating wildly in his chest. He’d lost a lot of blood, but this wasn’t— this didn’t seem like—

_Him._

Frantic, he tore down the block between himself and Rush, and was hit by a desperate, unfocused panic that was lashing out against the dark that subsumed it, kicking, screaming, trying to make itself known. Rush was still buried deep down in that dark, but some animal instinct in him was struggling to claw its way up, because something was _wrong_ , something was _wrong with him_ , he was— he couldn’t— he was _not breathing—_

“Greer,” Young choked out. “Greer, it’s not me, it’s—“

He doubled over, the whole world fading in and out in sinusoidal pulses. He was vaguely aware that Greer was leaning over Rush, forcing air into his lungs— gasps of oxygen that Young felt as though they were his own staggering breaths— and compressing his chest in short sharp bursts, and it _hurt_ , and Young clawed at his own chest, his heart shuddering, or— Rush’s heart shuddering, or—

He sucked in a long, raw stream of air.

“Come on, Doc,” Greer was muttering. “That’s right. Just keep breathing. I thought we were _through_ with this. Come on. Come on.”

Next to Young, Chloe was crying, making an unbearable, anguished noise that seemed to go on and on.

“Try the jacket thing,” Telford said from somewhere over Young’s shoulder. “Get his airway open. That seemed to work before.”

“ _Before?_ ” Young managed. The world was slowly coming back into focus. He tried to blink away the last, blank, randomly firing sparks. “This happened _before?_ ”

“A couple of times,” Telford said shortly. “Right after he knocked himself out.”

“He stopped _breathing?”_ Young demanded. He forced himself upwards unsteadily, lunging at Telford and getting a double handful of his jacket in his fists. “What the fuck did you _do_ to him? What the fuck were you _thinking_ , you goddamn—“

Telford shoved him backwards contemptuously. “Calm the fuck down, Everett.”

“How _dare_ you tell me to calm down when you—“

“You want to tell me what the fuck is going on with you two?” Telford eyed him challengingly. “No? Then get off my fucking ass. Try doing something _useful_ for a change.”

“ _Useful_?” Young bit out incredulously. “You mean like retaking this goddamn ship while you—“

A wave of nausea washed over him, and he had to sit abruptly, fumbling behind himself to find a chair. He reached out blindly for Rush, getting a hand around his wrist, and felt the nausea slightly ease. At the same time, his headache spiked as he got closer to Rush’s mind, which was a black, painful, aching, absent place. He tried to push his presence at Rush, who was breathing, but shallowly. Greer had balled up his jacket into a kind of pillow, using it to support Rush’s head. That had helped. _It’s all right_ , Young thought. _It’s all right. You’re okay now. Just keep breathing. Stick with us, genius._ He didn’t know if any part of Rush could hear.

Telford was watching him with narrowed eyes, his arms folded across his chest. “I’m taking command,” he said at last. “You and Armstrong get Wallace and Rush to the infirmary. That’s where you ought to be anyway; you’re bleeding like a stuck pig. I’ll take Scott, Greer, and Varro; we’ll move on the bridge. If we don’t make it— well, you can assemble a team and take another shot.”

Young’s first instinct was to argue, but Telford was right. There was no way he was taking the bridge like this. With Rush like this.

He glanced over at Eli, who’d been unnaturally quiet through the whole exchange. Eli was sitting on the floor, his back to the wall, hugging his knees to his chest. As Young watched, he brought the sleeve of his sweatshirt to his nose, wiping away a trickle of blood. His eyes were the same lacy, bloodshot red that Wray’s had been.

Young hadn’t even bothered to ask. He hadn’t noticed. The Nakai had clearly tortured him.

He shut his eyes. To his right, Chloe was hunched over, clearly trying to muffle her sobs.

“Fine,” he said shortly. “You win. You’re in command.”

“It’s not about _winning_ ,” Telford said in a clipped voice.

But as Young looked around the room, at James, with bruises mottling her throat, at Scott, white-faced from blood loss and sunk into a chair, at Greer, whose uniform was scorched at one shoulder, and who was leaning heavily against the table, holding two fingers to Rush’s neck— at _Rush_ , a limp jumble of limbs on the table, and at Eli, and Chloe, and even Telford, for that matter, raw-voiced and red-eyed and still suppressing a chest-rattling cough…

He was pretty sure that it was about winning. He just wasn’t sure that any of them had won.


	33. Chapter 33

About halfway to the infirmary, Young’s second wind had started to collapse. Or die out, maybe, or whatever it was winds did; or maybe it was his third at this point, or fourth; he’d more-or-less lost count. He’d been up for something like thirty-six hours at this point, and he going to have to push through at least a few more hours, but his arms had pretty much decided they were giving up, which was not ideal, because said arms were currently carrying Rush, and while that sustained contact seemed to make Rush’s sedated consciousness less restive, it also meant that Young felt like his head was going to split open.

They were about thirty yards from the doors when he finally collapsed, hitting his knees hard against the deck as he tried to control his fall and keep Rush cradled against his chest.

Chloe looked at him with a fearful expression. “Is he—“

“No,” Young said raggedly. “Not him. This time it was me.”

Behind Chloe, Eli bent over, one hand against the wall, and threw up. His nose had started bleeding again.

Chloe went to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay,” she whispered.

He shook her hand off. “Get away from me,” he said in a low voice.

Chloe looked like he’d slapped her. She backed away slowly.

Young shut his eyes briefly. “Chloe,” he said. “Come here.”

She crept over to him, her eyes going to Rush, whose head was lolling limply against Young’s shoulder.

“He’s having a hard time,” Young murmured, glancing at Eli. “It’s got nothing to do with you. You understand?”

“I know you’re talking about me,” Eli said loudly. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here. How about we talk about her instead? Maybe if _she_ hadn’t drugged Rush—“

Chloe’s face crumpled and she looked away, swallowing hard, clearly fighting back more tears.

Young regarded her steadily. “It’s got nothing to do with you,” he repeated quietly. “We’re almost there, okay? Just hang in there a little bit longer.”

He took a deep breath and stood, ignoring the pain, focusing on the soft brush of Rush’s hair against his shoulder, the cold pressure of his forehead, like Rush wasn’t unconscious but had merely fallen asleep, like they were in bed, and Young had pulled Rush to him to keep him warm, and Rush was breathing steadily and dreaming softly, maybe about molecules or locked doors, and everything was exactly the way it should be, nothing was wrong—

When Young blinked again, dazedly, they were standing in front of the infirmary, and Chloe was rapping softly at the metal doors.

“TJ,” Chloe called quietly. “It’s us. It’s Chloe. Open the doors.”

A complicated series of knocks came back, which Young recognized as Morse code.

“Tap back SOS,” he said, grimacing as he adjusted Rush in his grip.

After a few seconds, the doors opened to reveal TJ with an M16 in her hands, her hair turned blue-white by the emergency lighting. Her eyes widened as she took in their bedraggled crew.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “All of you to the back. What _happened?_ Is Rush injured?”

“Long story,” Young said shortly, “but: no. He’s—“ He had to close his eyes as his vision swam and his legs almost gave out. “He drugged himself with some Ativan that he took out of your bag. But he’s stopped breathing a couple of times now— guys, how many?” He directed the question to Chloe and Eli as they headed into the back room.

“Four,” Eli said grimly, sliding behind a computer terminal. “Four times.”

“ _Four times_ ,” Young repeated emphatically.

Chloe didn’t say anything.

“Well,” TJ said, her brow creased, “Ativan’s a respiratory depressant, and he’s been pretty sensitive to sedatives in the past. So that makes sense. Let me get him hooked up. You can put him down.”

Young laid Rush on the gurney she indicated and staggered back, taking a deep breath. He’d thought not carrying Rush would help, but it didn’t, really; he still felt light-headed, shaky, and sick.

“Are you okay?” TJ asked, darting a glance at him as she hooked Rush up to an IV. “Your jacket’s covered in blood.”

“I took a dart,” Young said briefly. “You know that. You’re the one who pulled it out of my back.”

The trouble with TJ was that she knew him too goddamn well. She knew the subtle tone in his voice when he was holding back information. She stared down at Rush as she took his temperature, and asked Young neutrally, “And after that?”

Young closed his eyes. “After that, I did what was necessary. Look, what happened to me’s not important. All I want to know is if he’s okay.”

“What do you want me to say? Of course he’s not okay. He’s unconscious; he’s not breathing well; his temp is way too low, and his blood pressure’s somewhere in the basement. But maybe you wanted me to make up a reassuring answer.”

“Are you getting fucking flip with me?” he asked her incredulously. “In the middle of a _foothold situation?_ Your _superior officer?_ While Rush is—“

“I don’t know; are _you_ getting flip with _me?_ ” she returned. Her voice was so tart it was almost acid, or as close to acid as TJ got. “In the middle of a foothold situation, about your fitness for duty?”

“I know I’m not fit for duty,” Young bit out. “I gave Telford command. Which, to be clear, means I handed over this ship to someone who fucking stole a syringe of Ativan out of your bag and mindfucked Rush to try to drug him without his consent, so please continue to insinuate that I’m a macho fucking moron because I don’t want to get bogged down in medical minutiae when I might have to go out and fight.”

“ _Excuse_ me?” Her voice was rising. “Medical _minutiae_? You’re going _nowhere_.”

“You think I have a goddamn choice? If Telford and Scott don’t take the bridge, we are this ship’s last fucking line of defense, and even now, _even_ _now_ , Volker and Brody are out there _unprotected_ because we haven’t _got_ anyone to back them up. I should be out there with them, I _could_ be out there with them, but instead I’m stuck here, doing _nothing_ except holding Rush’s fucking hand, so don’t—“

There was the sound of a crash, as outside Eli abruptly swept a box of supplies to the floor.

Young and TJ turned to face him.

“Volker and Brody made it to the mess through the bulkheads,” he said in a flat voice. He was staring at the floor. His fists were clenched. “They’re fine. I ported the internal sensors to the infirmary console. I’d already cleared them before—“

There was a long silence.

“Okay,” Young said.

Chloe had knelt silently and was gathering up the pill bottles that had been inside the box, repacking them methodically, one by one. “I can go,” she said quietly. “If someone has to. I’m the only one who’s not—“ Her voice caught, and she looked away, biting her lip. “I’m the only one who’s not injured.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Young said. “You’ve done enough.”

“Yeah,” Eli said bitterly. “You’ve done enough.”

“ _Eli_ ,” Young snapped.

Chloe set the box on a table and left the room.

Young sighed heavily. covering his face with his hands. “She was the one who gave Rush the Ativan,” he said to TJ, as quietly as he could. “To protect his mind from the computer virus. I mean— she’s the one who told him he should take it. I should go—“ He gestured. “Talk to her.”

TJ nodded. Her eyes had also followed Chloe. “Do we need to keep him under? Until the virus is out of the CPU?”

“Hell, I don’t know.” Young massaged his temples. “Can we even give him anything else?”

“We can put him on something with a short half-life. That way, if he has any problems, we stop the drip, and he comes right out of it. That would be my preference.”

“Yeah. Okay. Do that, I guess.” He looked at Rush, lying there on the gurney, not even looking like Rush. Just looking— still. And dead. Like a shell of a person. Or was Young thinking that because he couldn’t feel Rush in his head? Just a terrible, black, empty space with the texture of a bruise that he couldn’t stop pressing. Young hadn’t even been injured, but he felt it like an injury. Like Rush was so close to him they might as well share a body. And they did sometimes. They had. But that wasn’t the kind of closeness Young was talking about. That wasn’t the kind of closeness he meant.

He reached out and curled a hand around Rush’s cold fingers. He wanted to say something. _I’ll be right back_? No. That wasn’t it at all.

There was something that he wanted to say.

* * *

Chloe was curled up on a gurney in the next room with her knees hugged to her chest, crying her heart out— a full-on, ugly kind of crying that she probably hadn’t wanted anyone else to see. Young stood in the doorway for a minute before she noticed he was there; when she did, she shoved the heels of her hands against her eyes and said fiercely, “ _Don’t_. Don’t. Whatever you’re going to say, just—“

“If you don’t know what I’m going to say, how do you know you don’t want to hear it?”

“I _do_ know what you’re going to say, and it’s just going to be— _lies_ , just lies to make me _feel_ better,” she choked out. “Like I’m some stupid little girl. Eli’s right, and you know he’s right. You should be mad at me. You were mad at Colonel Telford, but _I’m_ the one you should be mad at.”

Young sighed. He crossed the room to lean against the gurney. “Look, Chloe, the situation with Colonel Telford is— complicated.”

“You shouldn’t blame him for what _I did_. You don’t know; you don’t know what I did.”

“I do know. I was there.”

“I was so _stupid,_ I was so fucking stupid, I knew that what he did was wrong, but I thought it would be better if Dr. Rush— he was so— he was so— I couldn’t _stand_ it; I thought I _knew_ what I was _doing_ , I—“ She stopped for a moment, dragging her sleeve across her nose. “Were you really there?”

“Yeah. In Rush’s head. I was with him. So I know what I’m talking about, all right?”

Chloe shook her head spasmodically. “He could’ve _died_. He wasn’t _breathing._ He kept _not breathing_ , and everyone was _yelling_ , and I was— I thought—“

“You couldn’t have known that was going to happen.”

“You’re such a _liar;_ don’t _lie_ to me. You said it was Colonel Telford’s fault for not knowing. But it was mine, it was mine— it was m-my fault—” Her voice splintered into another painful-looking sob. She folded her arms up over her head like she was trying to hide from him.

Young reached out for her and awkwardly got an arm around her shoulders. “Chloe— Chloe, shh. I was— look, I was really fucking angry at Telford, for a lot of reasons. It’s a long story. He said and did some things to Rush that were— upsetting to him. I’m just— angry, okay? I’m angry at everybody. I— expressed myself badly.” His mouth twisted. “I know, shocker, right?”

He’d been aiming for a laugh, but he didn't get one, not even a weak one. 

He sighed again. “I shouldn’t have said what I did. You made the right call.”

“You don’t know that,” she said, her voice muffled against his jacket.

“No,” he admitted, and swallowed hard. “Not a hundred percent. But I did talk to him. Rush. Well, part of him. It’s— that’s also— complicated. Part of him is with the ship. And he wasn’t upset. He wasn’t— like he was in the CI room. He was fine.” A little obfuscation, he thought, wouldn’t hurt. And maybe he was also telling himself a story. He was aware that he was one of those men who had the deficit that they often told other people what they wished they could tell themselves, because— hell, who knew, maybe it wasn’t manly to need or want reassurance.

Chloe leaned back and stared at him, as though trying to ascertain whether he was lying.

“I swear,” he said. “Cross my heart.” He ran his finger lightly across his chest.

“What did he say?” she whispered, looking at him with a curious kind of yearning.

Young squeezed his eyes shut for a minute. What _hadn’t_ Rush said. That thing that wasn’t completely Rush. It had pushed him back into the sagebrush and kissed him. It had told him Destiny’s goddamn mission. It had shouted at him and laid its head against his shoulder and cried. “He told me how to fix him up,” he said. “Assuming we get the virus out of the damn ship. Maybe you could help Eli with that.”

Her face shuttered. She looked down. “Eli hates me,” she said almost soundlessly. “I left them there. I left to try and rescue Matt and— and you, and— he got tortured. He got _tortured_. I wasn’t there. It should’ve been me.”

“Don’t you think you’ve been tortured enough?” Young said quietly.

“It doesn’t work like that, though,” she said unsteadily. “Does it?”

They looked at each other.

“No,” Young said. His throat hurt. “No, it doesn’t.”

She nodded, and pressed her lips together in a thin line.

“You were gonna rescue me, huh?” Young said, attempting to lighten the mood a little. “Come in, guns blazing?”

Chloe managed a very small, wavering smile. “I couldn’t just _sit_ there,” she said. “I had to do something. It sounds stupid, but— it’s the hardest thing, having to just _sit there_. You and Matt don’t understand.”

“No,” Young said, thinking of Rush laid out on that gurney. That terrible feeling of powerlessness that had yet to relent in its vice-tight, strangling hold on him. “I think it’s what we’re stuck with for the time being, though. So how do you feel about doing your sitting-there with me while TJ patches me up? She seems pretty angry, so I have a feeling I’m going to need someone on my side.”

Chloe laughed shakily, and wiped at her eyes. “You’re being very patronizing.”

“I am?”

“Yes. Dr. Rush says I shouldn’t let people patronize me.”

Young rolled his eyes and stood, offering her a hand to get off the gurney. “Well, if _Rush_ says it—“

Chloe took his hand and climbed down. Then she hesitated. “I really need him to be okay,” she whispered, small and fast, like she was telling Young a secret she wasn’t sure she could trust him with.

Young tightened his hand around her hand. He didn’t say anything.

* * *

Back in the main room, TJ was was monitoring Rush’s vitals while talking to Eli in a careful, even tone. Eli seemed to be answering her in monotonous, one-word answers. Both of them stopped when Young and Chloe came back in; Eli refused to look at them and stared at his computer monitor, while TJ raised her eyebrows queryingly at Young.

“Chloe’s convinced me that medical minutiae are worth my attention,” Young said, trying to put some level of apology into his voice. He had a feeling that he might have been… a little bit Rush-like in their previous conversation. He didn’t normally use the word _fuck_ so much.

“Is that so,” TJ said mildly. “In that case, you can get your shirt off. I need to have a look at your back.” She turned to the nearest cabinet, rummaging through a shelf of bottles.

“Yeah,” Young said under his breath. “Get my shirt off. Sure.” It sounded so easy. But Chloe had to help him, in the end; everything was blood-soaked, and stiff, and he couldn’t raise his arms above his shoulders. When he peeled his undershirt over his forearms, he hissed.

TJ returned with a suture kit and a bottle of ethanol. When she got a look at him, she stopped and said, horrified, “What the hell did you do to your _arms?_ ”

Young said wearily, “ _Might_ have had to pull out of some restraints.”

“This is not _minutiae._ ”

“I also sat in the interface chair. While we’re, you know, baring our souls to one another. It doesn’t seem to have scrambled my brains… much.”

“Because there’s nothing to scramble,” TJ said almost automatically, as she started cleaning and disinfecting the wound on his back. “ _God_ , Everett.”

“I’ve had better days.”

She put a single stitch in the puncture wound and taped it up in a complicated pattern over his shoulder, before turning her attention to his arms. “This is really going to hurt.”

“Oh, why the hell not. At this point, everything else does.” It was true, although he was probably getting a little punchy with exhaustion. His head ached ferociously, and every joint in his body seemed to have decided that now was the time for it to simply give up. Blood loss, maybe. Or he was getting too old for this shit.

TJ pulled out a bottle of ethanol, bandages, and gauze. She twisted the cap off the ethanol, but Young grabbed her wrist.

“He’s out, right? Really, _really_ out?”

She looked at him. “Yeah,” she said softly after a pause. “He shouldn’t feel a thing. I just started him on an anesthetic from Earth, and he’s still got a lot of Ativan on board.”

“I don’t want him feeling this. I don’t want it to confuse him.”

“He’s not feeling anything right now.”

“Okay,” Young said, and released her. He gritted his teeth. “Do your worst.”

He watched in a kind of horrified fascination as she doused his forearm, turning it quickly to reach every inch of his skin. For a second, he couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. Then—

He stopped breathing.

“ _Breathe_ ,” TJ said, but clearly she was mistaken, because: first, he wasn’t biologically capable of breathing, and second, if he didn’t breathe, he would die, which was what he wanted, because it _hurt_ , and— “ _Breathe_ ,” she said again, louder, and what kind of sadist was she, and how had he not _known_ this about her, and then she was wrapping his arm in gauze, and it was over, it was _over_.

Except it wasn’t over, because she picked up his other arm.

“Let’s, uh, hold off on that one,” he said edgily. “What do you think?”

She smiled at him. “Sorry, Colonel. No can do.”

“Chloe,” Young said over his shoulder, “I need you to stage a mutiny.”

Chloe came and rested a hand on his back. It was surprisingly reassuring.

TJ tipped the bottle of ethanol over, and—

Young opened his eyes to find himself slumped forward over the table. Both of his arms were cleanly bandaged. Chloe was rubbing his back.

“TJ went to get you a spare uniform,” she murmured. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, what do we mean by _okay_ , anyway,” Young said tiredly. He was amazed he’d woken up. His body felt like it wanted to sleep for about thirty-seven hours.

Young’s radio crackled, startling him. It felt like they’d been on radio silence for weeks.

“This is Telford,” Telford’s ragged voice came over the channel. “We’ve taken the bridge. I repeat, the bridge is secure. Twelve Nakai remain on the ship, located near the starboard FTL drive. We are currently in pursuit.”

Young grabbed the radio, broadcasting on all channels. “This is Young. All personnel are ordered to remain where they are unless in pursuit of the Nakai.”

TJ returned, carrying a shirt and jacket in hand. “We’ll be getting wounded,” she murmured.

“We haven’t been doing too bad,” Young said. “All things considered. Reynolds, Wray, and Barnes— James got a little roughed up, but she was still going, last I saw her. I don’t know what the situation’s like by now, though—“ He glanced at Chloe. “I’m sure Telford would’ve mentioned if there were any major casualties.”

“You left yourself off that list,” TJ said. “Not that that should surprise me. And—“ She looked over at Eli.

Eli seemed to sense the attention. He flinched, freezing for a moment before he continued typing. “I’m not _wounded_ ,” he said in a flat voice.

“Eli—“ TJ began softly.

“I’m _fine_. And I need to work. So how about you leave me the fuck alone?”

There was a short silence.

“Okay,” TJ said almost soundlessly. “Okay. I’m going to go prep for—“ She collected up the last of the supplies she’d used on Young and retreated to the front room.

“You get one pass on that kind of language,” Young said levelly after a long pause. “I know it’s been a hell of a day. But I won’t have you talking to her like that.”

“Why not,” Eli said in the same voice, still staring at his monitor. “ _You_ talk to her like that.”

“TJ and I have a different relationship.”

“What, you mean because you were screwing her?”

“ _Eli!”_ Chloe said in shocked whisper from behind Young.

Young looked at Eli evenly. “I won’t have you talking to _me_ like _that_ , either. If you’ve got something to say to me—“

“Why are you _here?_ ” Eli demanded.

Young didn’t know what Eli wanted him to say. “Because I’m no goddamn use anywhere else right now.”

“We already established that you’re no goddamn use anywhere else. That you’re— what was it you said? _Stuck here doing nothing except holding Rush’s fucking hand._ Except you’re not doing that, either. So I guess you’re just no goddamn use at all.”

“Rush is so deep under he wouldn’t know if the Pope was sitting with him,” Young said in a clipped voice. “You don’t think I’d _know_ if he needed me?”

“I don’t know,” Eli said. He was still staring at the computer. “Chloe, what do you think? Do you think Colonel Young would know? If Rush _needed_ him?”

“Eli,” Chloe whispered, “don’t do this.”

“Look, just say what you’ve got to say,” Young said. “Get it out of your system.”

“What I’ve got to say,” Eli began— and then broke off. He was shaking his head. “Do you even know what _happened_ in that room?”

“Yeah,” Young said shortly. “I was there. You know that. Rush was talking to me.”

“No. _Before_ that. In the– in the _hallway_ , even.” Eli had stopped typing, though his eyes were still fixed on the screen.

“… No,” Young said. “I know he was— I know he didn’t want to go.”

“No. He didn’t want to _fucking_ go. He was trying to make the doors open. And the doors wanted to stay open. Like every fucking door on this ship wants to open for him. But Telford had put a manual lock on them. So Rush was losing his shit, just— kicking the shit out of Greer, trying to get loose, screaming all this stuff in Ancient, which of course no one could fucking understand. Except me. I was the one who had to hear it. I’ll spare you the recap; you can probably imagine the gist. Your name featured a lot. _E’d discessurus nessom._ That was a big one. _I won’t leave him._ Pretty predictable. Like maybe a one-point-five on the scale of creative things to scream while you’re being dragged away from the person you—“

“—Don’t,” Young cut him off on a sharp indrawn breath.

“You _said—“_ Eli said, his voice shaking. “You said I could _say_ what I had to _say_. I’m not _done._ Because what’s weird is that _I won’t leave him_ even makes sense, like, considering that we were— you know— leaving you. But then he also comes out with _Nemed discede_. _Please don’t leave me._ So, I don’t know. Maybe you have some thoughts on that. On why he would feel like _you_ were leaving _him_. I mean, I’m sure he was planning to expound on the topic, so maybe that would have cleared things up, but that was when Telford slapped him and told him to get it together. That it was done. That he wasn’t getting through those doors.”

Young needed to not be in this room.

“Why are you doing this,” Chloe said in a shaky but ferocious voice. “Just because you’re miserable doesn’t give you the right to take it out on—“

“I mean, I’m sure it was just the computer virus,” Eli cut her off loudly. “Right? Because why would he even _care._ Why would he _give_ a damn? That’s his whole thing, right? That he doesn’t _care_ about _anything._ According to you.”

Young needed to not be in this room.

“So that’s probably what it was. For the next _half hour_. When Greer had to put him in _restraints_ because he kept fucking trying to get back to the gateroom. Even though there was _no chance_ that he could do anything for you. I mean— how fucking _stupid_ is that, right? And he’s supposed to be a genius. So I’m sure it was _nothing._ Nothing that you have to—“

Young left the room.

He could hear Chloe saying something low and sharp to Eli, and Eli said, “Yeah, well, _you_ weren’t there; you decided we weren't worth your time—“

Chloe didn’t deserve that, but—

He needed to not be in that room.

He went and stood in the doorway of Rush’s room instead, even though he could feel that Rush was far, far down in the darkness. Much, much too far for Young to ever reach. He wondered what it was like down in the dark. He hoped it was restful.

He didn’t see how it could be.

He pulled a chair up and sat beside Rush’s bed, even though he found Rush hard to look at. Knowing that a piece of him wasn’t there.

Now that he was looking for it, he could see the bruises on the outside of Rush’s hands, where he’d tried to tear his way out of plastic restraints.

“Nothing’s going to hold _you_ back, huh, genius?” Young said softly. He was surprised that Rush hadn’t snapped his damn wrists. After all, Young had half-skinned his forearms trying to pull pretty much the same trick. Greer must have done a good job of tying him up.

Rush was shivering slightly, even though TJ had put a blanket over him. Young rested a hand on his forehead. It was cold. Sighing, he went to get another blanket from the cabinet, and covered Rush carefully with it. Then he put his hand on Rush’s forehead again, because— Rush had said it helped. External heat sources. 

He sat there under the stale infirmary lights. “ _Efficiency,_ ” he said in a low voice, smoothing Rush’s hair out of his eyes. “ _Heat._ _That’s the only reason._ Right. You are— you’re so full of shit. _People kiss each other all the time_. Well, I met your evil twin in the interface, and he tried to put the moves on me, and he was only thirty percent of you, so—“

His voice cracked and he had to stop talking.

“So I figure you must not completely hate me,” he finished unsteadily at last. “I don’t know; I, um—“ He was fumbling to find things to say so he wouldn’t have to say what he was going to say. “I guess he wasn’t really your evil twin; if anything, _you’re_ the evil twin. He was nice, actually. But you’re— um. Christ—“ His voice had gone shaky again. “I don’t even know if you want to hear this.”

He leaned forwards, folding his arms onto the bed so he could rest his head on them, so he wouldn’t have to hold himself up, but he could still look at Rush, because he needed to look at Rush.

“You were right,” he whispered after a moment, his voice tight and miserable. “I guess you’re pretty much always right. Don’t you ever get tired of that? —Don’t answer. I know you do.” He shut his eyes for a second. “I, uh— I guess I always thought other people were no big deal. You know? Which, if Emily heard me saying that, she’d be… but she probably knows that already, right? I probably even said it to her about TJ. _It’s not a big deal._ What a fucking charmer. I must’ve known why it wasn’t a big deal. But I just thought—I kept telling myself— it’s got to be like that for everyone, they’re just more  _dramatic_ about it, it’s definitely not a big deal. I didn’t— I couldn’t ever— God. God.”

He felt like his skin was being turned inside out. Like it was a reversible coat, and he’d stained one side, so now he’d have to wear the other one forever, but it turned out to be made of nerve endings.

He said thickly, “But I was always the butchest of the soldier boys, so you were wrong about that. A hundred percent wrong. _None_ of the rest of them could ride horses. Not even Mitchell can ride a horse. Not that you care about that kind of thing. In fact, I can just imagine the face you’d be making.”

That made his throat close. When he could speak again, he said with difficulty, “I should— probably tell you that you, uh. I think you might be a big deal. In fact, maybe I should just start calling you that, _big deal_ , because it’d really piss you off. And maybe that’d help you— wake up, or whatever, because you’ve got to wake up. Not till we get this virus out of the computer. But after that. You can’t just— not wake up, after you put me through all this shit; you can’t just _do this_ to me and fuck off to wherever you are. It’s not _fair_ , and I don’t need you telling me that _life_ isn’t fair, because now I’ve got you doing it my goddamn head. And also, so _what_ if life isn’t fair; that doesn’t mean it _can’t_ be. Right? It _can_. If you fight for it. So I’m going to need you to fight for it a little. Because it’s not like you don’t know how to fight. I’m sure Greer’s going to give you an earful about that.”

He gazed at Rush’s still, pale face, the dark crescents of his eyelashes where they lay across his cheeks.“That’s— that’s about it. That’s everything I got,” he said almost soundlessly. “But I’m just going to stay here for a minute. Just till you get a little bit warmer. Heat. Efficiency. That’s the only reason. So don’t— don’t mind me.”

* * *

Twenty hundred hours found Young on the bridge with Park and Volker. At that point, the last of the Nakai were dead, the wounded had been transported to the infirmary, and the science team had been divided up into shifts to help Eli with the elimination of the virus. Young had finally managed to eat something, picking through a tasteless MRE, but he had a feeling his big crash was on the pretty near horizon. The world was starting to have a surreal quality, although maybe that was just because it was night now, and it had been night when the Nakai started dialing, when meant it had been twenty-four hours, and it felt like— God— weeks. Weeks and no time at all. How could it be night already? Hadn’t the previous night dragged on for a month?

Park and Volker were talking— gossiping, more like— about who’d been wounded, and how badly. Barnes and Reynolds weren’t in great shape, and TJ had given Scott a blood transfusion, but really the casualty everyone cared about was Rush. But no one quite dared to ask Young how he was doing, so instead they just darted significant looks at him, and fell into awkward silences, and he opted to ignore them, because if they couldn’t manage to get up the courage, he wasn’t going to fucking volunteer to talk about Rush to them.

Park and Volker had lapsed into one of those awkward silences now, and Volker was looking over his shoulder at Young.

Young raised his eyebrows somewhat aggressively at him, and Volker quickly looked away.

The door to the bridge hissed open, and— predictably, given Young’s luck— Telford entered. He was wearing a fresh uniform, and looked like he’d shaved. His eyes were still somewhat red-rimmed from the tear gas, but otherwise he could have just stepped through the gate. Young spared a brief moment for resentment.

“You look like shit,” Telford said to Young.

“Thanks,” Young said tightly. “You look better.”

“I’m here to relieve you. TJ respectfully _requests_ your presence in the infirmary.”

Young sighed and pushed himself to his feet, a little unsteadily.

Telford reached over to give him a hand, and leaned in as he did so. “We’re going,” he said in a low voice, “to _talk_ , Everett. About this situation with you and Rush.”

Young pulled away. “Later,” he said shortly.

“Later, then. But don’t think you’re going to use any of Rush’s fucking tricks to put me off. I know them all.”

“Do you?” Young asked mildly. He deliberately left his tone ambiguous.

Telford met his eyes. “Don’t get in my way, Everett,” he said.

Young pushed past him without answering.

He made his way to the infirmary, which had gained a few occupants. Scott was sleeping on a gurney, and Chloe had fallen asleep in a chair beside him, her cheek pressed against his hand. TJ was talking to Barnes; she glanced up as Young entered, but just waved him back. So presumably her “request” had just been a backhanded way to get him to rest. He was tired enough that he didn’t really mind it, though he thought he probably shouldn’t let her keep getting away with that kind of thing. When had she turned so devious? Maybe she’d picked it up from dealing with Rush.

He’d been heading for Rush’s room, but he stopped short in the doorway. Wray was curled up in the chair next to Rush’s bed. She was holding a white iPod with headphones snaking out of it. One earbud was in her right ear, and the other in Rush’s left. Her hand was resting on Rush’s forearm. He hadn’t even known that she really liked Rush. He’d more-or-less thought she tolerated him.

Her eyes flickered up to him after a moment. They were still horribly bloodshot.

“Hey,” she said quietly.

“Hey,” he said. “What are you listening to?”

“Satie. Gymnopédie No. 1. It’s my contribution.”

“Your _contribution?_ ” he repeated.

“To the campaign.”

“What campaign?”

She smiled wanly. “If you don’t know, I’ll let Eli tell you.”

“Do I _want_ to know?” he asked skeptically.

“It’s nice. You’ll like it.”

They were both silent for a moment. Young could hear the very faint sound of piano music from the headphones. He sat on the edge of the adjacent gurney.

“Do you think he can hear it?” Wray murmured after a while.

“I don’t know. TJ’s got him pretty snowed.”

“Good,” Wray whispered. “That’s good.” She looked down at Rush’s still face. A single tear leaked slowly from the corner of left eye. She sniffed and unobtrusively brushed it away. “You should sleep,” she said.

“I’m fine.”

“I’ll sit with him. I’m not tired.”

“Liar,” he said gently.

She didn’t look at him. “Still,” she said. “Still. You should sleep.”

Maybe he should have argued with her. But he was unbelievably weary, and now that he was sitting on an actual bed, he was finding it hard to get up again. He gave in and stretched out on the gurney, closing his eyes. It felt strange, though, to be so far away from Rush. Not to have Rush just— _there_ , curled under his absentminded arm, a humming presence that kept moving at the back of his head. In his mind, he inched up right to the very edge of the space where Rush started. The space where Rush was supposed to start. It was just a pit of motionless dark. The ecosystem was absent.

//I’m going to sleep,// he whispered. //If you wanted to tag along, I wouldn’t tell anybody. I wouldn’t try to wake you up. You could just— hang out for a while.//

There was no answer.

He slept almost at once, sucked by his own exhaustion into a series of intense and disorientating dreams. He dreamed that he kept walking past phones that weren’t ringing, that he kept pushing at DHDs that refused to light up, that his radio was broadcasting static, and he kept shaking it, trying to make it work. _Hello?_ he said into the static. _Hello? Can you hear me?_ But he couldn’t tell if there was anyone on the other end. He couldn’t tell if anyone heard. _Hello?_ he said. _Please._ Somewhere a solo piano was playing, wistful and melancholy-sounding. He kept following it and following it, but he could never find its source.


	34. Six Syllables

It’s late, and the infirmary is almost empty, which gives it kind of a spooky feel. Not hospital-spooky, because the weird thing about the infirmary is that it’s nothing like a hospital. It’s all dim lights and dark metallic colors. It looks— well, okay, cards on the table time, Greer’s always thought that it doesn’t look _clean._ He’s either dying to take a scrub brush to those walls or he’s afraid to. Sure, no one was living on the Destiny before they got here, but shit gets dirty. That’s what it does. He learned that in Basic. You could leave your boots alone for a _second_ , not even _touching_ them, and some type of something or another would find its way onto those shoes. And you could bet your ass your drill instructor’d be looking hard at those boots, and it wasn’t even because he had it in for you, although pretty much all of Greer’s drill instructors _had_ had it in for him, mostly because he’d already been a mouthy son-of-a-bitch. No, that drill instructor would be looking hard because he knew his dumb-ass baby recruits had not yet learned the lesson about how shit worked— not just that everything in this world was moving towards its un-fucking-stoppable falling-apart-ness, but that it was their job to interfere in that process from here on in.

So. He doesn’t trust those rusty-ass-looking infirmary walls, even though everybody else seems to think they’re all aesthetic and shit.

“What do you think, Doc?” he asks Rush’s unconscious body. “You think those walls are aesthetic, or just hauling about a million years’ worth of nasty Ancient dust rabbits? No, wait, never mind; your opinion’s pretty much worthless, because I _know_ you do not shower as often as you should. You’ve been getting a little better lately; you gave up that whole crazy hermit look. Mostly. Still, let’s just say I don’t trust your cleanliness instincts.”

He turns back to the book in his hands. “Now, where were we. Oh, yeah. How could I forget. _My days are swifter than a runner. They fly away without a glimpse of joy. They skim past like boats of papyrus. Like eagles swooping down on their prey._ Now that, right there, is a bad— what do you call it. I’m pretty sure it’s a simile. If your _days_ are like _eagles_ , then what the fuck are they swooping on? Unanswered question." He goes on. " _If I say, ‘I will forget my complaint, I will change my expression and smile,’ I still dread all my sufferings. Since I know you will not hold me innocent._ Which is— excuse my language— some _bullshit._ Why is this guy even into God if he knows that God is gonna be like this?”

Rush doesn’t offer an interpretation.

“Keep in mind that I’m pretty sure God is Colonel Telford in this context. Like, the message I’m being sent is definitely _shut your damn mouth, Sergeant Greer, because the ways of officers are— like— mysterious and shit._ Which, just between you and me, I don’t find Colonel Telford’s ways all that _mysterious_. I just think he deserves to get punched for them once in a while. I didn’t even punch him this time. I just yelled at him a little. That’s probably why all he did was give me Sunday School homework.”

Either that, or Telford had been feeling guilty. Though Greer doesn’t really see Telford as the kind of guy who feels all that guilty. He hadn’t seemed like he felt guilty after he tried to drug Rush. That’d been what had sent Greer off the deep end, even more than the fucked-up way Telford dealt with Rush. Not that he wasn’t mad about that, too, mostly because he kept thinking about how Young had talked about the two of them. Maybe Greer back then had thought, a little, _Right, sure. Like Rush is going to buy what Telford’s selling_. Rush doesn’t buy _anything_ from _anyone_. Rush is the equivalent of some dude living off the land who insists on, like, herding sheep and spinning his own sheep-hair for clothes. That’s how committed he is to not buying people’s shit. But then, sure enough, he let Telford get right to him.

“I’m sure you were just off your game,” Greer tells Rush, patting him on the shoulder. “I _know_ you don’t want me to be offended that half the time you look at _me_ like you think I’m trying to run some kind of scam, when (a) there is nothing on this damn ship worth scamming anybody for, and (b) usually my only scam is trying to get you to put some food in your body before you fall down. But Telford? Oh, Telford you like. Sure.”

He shakes his head. “Okay, back to Job and his bad fucking ideas. _Even if I washed myself with soap, and my hands with cleansing powder, you would plunge me into a slime pit so that my own clothes would detest me._ What the— you know what, if someone plunges me into a slime pit, they’re _damn_ sure not getting away with it. Although I guess—“ he pauses, suddenly uncomfortable. “Well, I don’t want to ruin this whole patter I’ve got going. But I guess it depends who’s doing the plunging. I get that. That’s all I’ll say.” But that’s not all he says. He goes on talking. “Hell, maybe it _isn’t_ about who’s doing the plunging. Maybe you just wore yourself a track down to that goddamn pit. Like— oh, it’s Monday morning, must be time to get thrown in the slime pit again. Takes somebody else to wake you up and say, _You fucking what?_ Sounds like somebody needs to do that for our man Job here.”

Greer looks back down at the book. “Okay. That’s all I’ll say. _He is not a mere mortal like me, that I might answer him, that we might confront each other in court. If only there were somebody to mediate between us, someone to bring us together, someone to remove God’s rod from me._ Mm-hm. See? That’s what I’m talking about.”

Behind him, somebody clears his throat.

Greer glances over his shoulder, but he’s already resigned to the fact that it’s probably going to be Colonel Young— the person most likely to find it really fucking hilarious that Greer is having a one-sided conversation with Rush.

Sure enough, Young is looking at him, eyebrows raised and mouth obviously fighting a smile.

“Colonel,” Greer says.

“What’ve you got there?” Young asks him, nodding his head towards the book.

“Uh, Colonel Telford seemed to feel I could use some moral improvement.” He holds up the cheap hotel-room Bible.

“I just bet he did,” Young said darkly. “Did you rip him a new one over the whole—“ He gestures in Rush’s direction.

“More-or-less,” Greer admits. “He, uh—“ He bites his tongue, because if Young doesn’t already know what happened with the whole Telford-freaking-Rush-out thing, Greer doesn’t want to be the one to tell him.

“Yeah,” Young says, his smile fading. “I was in Rush’s head.”

“Right,” Greer says.

“Not before he started talking to me. I kind of… get the sense he was a handful.”

“Yeah,” Greer says, looking down at Rush. At the bruises on the outsides of Rush’s wrists. Greer has a few bruises himself. Like, a _lot_ of bruises. He’s lucky Rush didn’t nail a kidney or something. Mostly he just managed to get Greer’s shins. “He, uh, really didn’t want to leave that gateroom.”

“Yeah,” Young whispers. “That’s what I heard.”

Telford’d had to hit Rush across the face even to get his attention, so Rush would quit trying to open the gateroom doors. Then he’d gotten Rush’s chin in his hand and he’d said, _Get it the fuck together. You want to lose this goddamn ship? Then quit acting like a spoiled kid._ That hadn’t shut Rush down, though. Not by a long shot. He’d just given up on the doors and focused on getting loose from Greer. Greer just about managed to hang on to him till they got to the CI room, but Rush was _not_ going to let them put him through that doorway, so in the end Greer had to zip-tie him on the corridor deck. It had kind of sucked. Rush really didn’t like being restrained. That’d been the only time that Greer was kind of grateful for Telford, or didn’t really know what to make of him, because Telford had pinned Rush’s shoulders down and leaned in close and said, _Nick, I know you hate this, but no one wants to hurt you. We need you. We need you, okay? We don’t want to hurt you._ And that had gotten through to Rush a little bit, enough that he went kind of quiet under Telford’s hands, and Greer had been able to to tie his wrists. It was weird, because Greer would have sworn in that moment that Telford _did_ care about Rush, which is to say that he at least gave a fuck; he was _looking_ at Rush like he gave a fuck. About _something._ And Greer had never seen Telford look at anybody like he gave a fuck. So he didn’t know what to make of that. He’d filed it away for future fucking observance.

And of course Greer _did_ give a fuck, even though he was _definitely_ somebody who hardly ever gave a fuck— which was why he considered himself uniquely qualified to deal with Telford, because there was not giving a fuck and there was _not giving a fuck_. But when _Greer_ had tried to talk Rush down, when they were in the CI room— no way, Rush wasn’t having it. Come on, Greer had said, I know you hate being tied up. If you calm down a little, in a while we can take those things off. What do you say? Talk to me. Rush wasn’t really speaking English at that point, though, and Greer’s Ancient was pretty limited. Even though he’d gotten past the yes/no stage, at least, so he knew that a lot of what Rush was saying, when he wasn’t saying Young’s name over and over, was just different variations of the word _no._ Greer had kept at it, though: Seriously, I’m not at least as good as Telford? Sitting all with you and everything? I gotta tell you, I am personally fucking offended by that, Doc. I’m going to hold that against you. And I am _good_ at holding grudges. I’m a champion grudge-holder. So maybe you want to get out in front of that and throw me a bone here. One word. Could be, I don’t know, _paleontology_ or something. You want to tell me to paleontology off? Or another one of your six-syllable wonders. Yeah, break out one of those babies. I know you love making us feel all inferior, even though you can’t assemble a rifle for shit.

He’d gone on like that for a while, but eventually he got tired, so he was taking a little break when Rush finally whispered, in a broken voice, _Dehumanization._

Greer had looked at him for a long time without speaking, then reached out to lay a gentle hand on his back.

“I think,” Greer says carefully, “maybe some of it was just, you know, the computer virus. Plus, he doesn’t like it when you’re not around.”

“No,” Young says softly. “I know.”

“For someone who’s so hellbent on scaring off other people, he kind of doesn’t do well on his own.”

“No.”

“I guess that’s one of those, what do you call them, paradoxes. The Dr. Nicholas Rush paradox.”

“ _The_ Dr. Nicholas Rush paradox?” Young says with a wavering smile. “That’s an awfully bold statement.”

“Yeah, okay. He’s a bundle of ‘em.” Greer glances at Rush with what he’s not ashamed to call affection.

When he looks back, he sees that Young is gazing at Rush, and his expression that— well, it’s _private._ It’s just a private expression. Something that Greer feels like he doesn’t have the clearance for.

He sits there for a while and lets Young look at Rush, because he figures that right now that’s what Young needs to do.

“The thing is,” Young finally says after a few minutes, “he’s not just mentally linked to the ship. I guess you probably noticed that. He and the ship are, uh— they’re sort of merging? Or— him and the AI. And he’s storing thirty percent of his _brain_ on the computer. Which is why—So given all that, it’s pretty obvious that he’s not— that he’s not going to—“ He falters.

“He’s not coming back to Earth,” Greer says, so Young doesn’t have to.

Young closes his eyes. “He still could,” he whispers. “I could still shut off the CPU and just—“

Greer nods slowly, like he’s considering this, like it strikes him as a totally reasonable thing to do. “What would happen to the AI?” he asks.

“Does it matter?”

Greer looks at him steadily. He says, “I mean, I don’t have any strong opinions one way or the other on whether it’s— like— a _human being_ , but I think it would matter a whole hell of a lot to Rush.”

“He would never forgive me,” Young said. “But he’d be alive. And I can’t—“

His voice falters. He comes forward and stands at the foot of Rush’s bed. The corners of his eyes are tight, like he’s thinking about something painful. Greer can pretty much guess what he _can’t_.

“It just seems like,” Young says quietly, “now would be a good time to— I could wake him up and see what he’s like without that thirty percent. He’s carrying around a lot of extra— you know. So he might be almost normal.”

Greer considers his response. “Yeah,” he says carefully, “but what do you mean by _normal_? Are we talking about somebody who roots for the Broncos and listens to talk radio? Cause that’s not going to be normal to him. If someone woke me up and I was suddenly doing _his_ shit, doing math a thousand miles a minute and flying starships with my brain, I’d pretty much freak the fuck out. Excuse my language, sir. And that’s going from normal speed to fast forward. Not suddenly getting stuck in frame-by-frame. I mean— do you even know what’s in that thirty percent?”

Young looks like he’s getting eaten from the inside out. “A lot,” he whispers. “It’s a lot.”

“Yeah.” Greer looks at Rush’s still face. “As much as the Doc could stand to take it down a notch sometimes, he wasn’t doing so hot even with that thirty percent just virused-up. So maybe we should just… chill out on that idea for a little while.”

Young nods without speaking.

There’s a short silence.

“Greer,” Young says softly at last.

“Yeah?”

“I’m not going to leave him here.”

Greer thinks about all the implications of that statement. The thing that makes it hard to respond to is that he doesn’t think Young was really talking to him. Young was talking to himself. But it was one of those things that’s got to be said out loud, something that needs a witness, like all binding contracts do.

“Well,” he says very neutrally, “maybe he’ll work something out. Could be a long time before _any_ of us head back to Earth. Could be the ship’ll get tired of him by then anyways.”

“Could be,” Young says in a cracked voice.

They’re both pretending that Greer didn’t understand exactly what Young meant.

“You want to sit with him for a while?” Greer says tentatively. “You can have my chair if you want.”

“I have to go check in with Eli. He’s about to reboot the mainframe. They want to let it run for a while before we…” He gestures at Rush.

“Yeah,” Greer says. “Okay. That makes sense. Well, I’ll—”

“See you,” Young finishes.

“Sir,” Greer says.

So Young turns and leaves.

Greer stares back down at the Bible. “That was really fucking depressing,” he tells Rush. “I can’t believe you made me listen to that. The shit I do for you, man… And what do I get? I gotta read about the world’s most messed-up relationship, where God keeps throwing this dude in the slime pit all the time. I can’t figure out if he thinks he deserves it or what. Job, not— you know– the man upstairs, cause he _knows_ Job doesn’t deserve it. But Job, he’s all like, I’m innocent, I’m innocent, but at the same time, man, I don’t know. Not that I’m saying I don’t get the mindset, but— you got to resist that shit. Cause you don’t deserve it. _He_ doesn’t deserve it.”

He sets the book on the side table with a sigh. “Whatever. I figure Telford’s going to be plenty impressed if I just prove I can read. That man does _not_ like me. Wouldn’t’ve pegged him for liking you either. You got to tell me the story on that one when you get around to waking up. Cause there’s different kinds of liking, maybe. I _like_ my M16, and I’d _like_ an M4 carbine with a mounted grenade launcher even more. But it’s not gonna tear my world apart if one of them doesn’t make it back to Earth. So maybe, you know, you should think on that some.”

For a few minutes he’s quiet, just shaking his head. “Maybe you should think on that some,” he says again, softer. “When you get around to waking up. Not that I’m trying to play down the very intimate relationship between a man and his M16 rifle. But fuck, Doc. I'm just saying. Fuck.”

Greer stares at the ceiling for a long time.

After a while, he puts his head in his hands.


	35. Chapter 35

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Relevant translations are in the end note.

It was nearly twenty-three hundred hours. Young sat alone in the mess, feeling on edge. The tables had been righted and everything looked back to normal, but the whole room still felt weirdly tainted by battle— like some kind of stain had been left on the floor. Not a physical stain. It was just his nerves, maybe. He hadn’t really been able to catch up on sleep; it was hard for him to sleep without Rush there.

Then there was the problem he was about to be dealing with.

The door hissed open, and Telford entered: exactly on time, not a minute earlier or later. He’d probably been lurking outside the door.

“Everett,” he greeted Young, crossing the room.

Young nodded neutrally. “David.”

“How’s Rush?” Telford asked, taking a seat across from him at the table.

“The same,” Young said evenly. “TJ’s going to try waking him up tomorrow.”

“And you’re doing better, I see.”

“That’s what happens when you get medical treatment for blood loss and exhaustion.” Young shrugged, making a point of spreading his hands so the bandages showed at the wrists.

Telford was watching him closely. “But— correct me if I’m wrong— your problems started _before_ you got injured,” he said, feigning curiosity. “In fact, isn’t that how you got injured in the first place? You passed out. Well, you and Rush passed out. Rush got up. You didn’t.”

“It had been a long day.”

“You stayed on your feet for the next twelve hours, during which you fought two pitched battles and crawled across half the ship. And that was _after_ the blood loss and exhaustion. So,” Telford said, folding his arms with mathematical exactness. “Maybe consider whether now might be the time to stop bullshitting me.”

“ _Excuse_ me?”

“I told you I knew all of Rush’s tricks. This isn’t even at the level of a trick, though. It’s just— weak, Everett. Very weak.”

They stared at each other with open hostility.

“I am on this ship,” Telford said softly. “You’ve already lost that battle. And before you decide to take on _this_ battle, you should keep in mind that your position here is tenuous. Very tenuous indeed.”

“You think so?” Young said, challenging. “Try getting me through that gate.”

“All it would take is one meeting with the IOA—“

“ _Fuck_ the IOA. They don’t live on this starship. They have no practical authority on Destiny.”

Telford had tilted his head. He wasn’t rising to the bait. “Interesting,” he said. “That you say _Destiny._ Like Rush does. Not _the Destiny._ Did you even notice that you do that now?”

“Speaking of tenuous positions,” Young said, matching the coolness of his tone. “How is the IOA going to feel when they hear the story about how you almost killed a civilian consultant in a Goa’uld lab?”

Telford rolled his eyes. “Oh, and here we go again. You know, you really need to get a new fixation. I told you already: Rush agreed to the whole thing, and anyway, I was compromised. You’re never going to make those charges stick.”

“I don’t need to make them _stick_ ,” Young said. “I don’t even need for them to be charges. I’m just asking how the IOA would feel. When they heard about how you used him as a _lab rat—“_

“He used _himself_ as a lab rat,” Telford said sharply.

“—a man whose _wife was dying_ , who was under _incredible pressure_ —“

“Come on, we were _all_ under incredible pressure. As a matter of fact, we _still are_ —“

“—a man who, for God’s sake, you’d _seduced_ —“ Young paused. “You know, I really feel like that part is the grace note. I wonder if the IOA would agree.”

“Who I’d _seduced?_ ” Telford looked amused. Then his eyes narrowed. “Oh, Everett. Is _that_ what this is really about?” He laughed. “Please tell me you’re not stooping that low. Because I can tell you that no matter what it is you _think_ you’re getting from him, in the end he’ll get what he wants and you’ll just get— well, screwed.”

“I’m having trouble seeing how he _wanted_ what he got from you,” Young said tightly.

“Then you don’t understand Nicholas Rush. He wanted _exactly_ what he got from me. Hell, look at where he ended up.” Telford gestured around him. “Here he is, right in the catbird seat. I wouldn’t be surprised if he _always_ knew the experiment had worked. Months of sulking around Icarus Base, _oh no, poor Nick, so broken,_ all just to bamboozle me into leaving him alone so he could go sneak onto my starship.”

“Destiny is not your fucking starship,” Young bit out. “It never has been.”

“It’s not _your_ fucking starship, either, is it, though?” Telford said mildly. “It’s _his._ You should ask yourself what role you play in his little—“ he made a derisive gesture— “machinations, because I guarantee you that when it’s over, you’re getting kicked right out of bed.” He paused. “Metaphorically speaking, of course.”

“I’m not sleeping with Rush,” Young said flatly.

“Well, in that case, you definitely should. That way, at least you’d be getting _something_ out of the situation.”

“Was that how _you_ justified it?”

Telford shrugged with what seemed like plain and unfeigned nonchalance. “Nick needs a firm hand to keep him in line, otherwise he gets away with murder. Hell, he manages to get away with murder even _with_ a firm hand. You can’t let him be the one pulling the trigger. You have to make sure he knows that he’s the _gun_. He’s a fucking spectacular gun— God, is he— but he can’t be left to his own devices. Just look at the kind of trouble he stirs up. At the time, it seemed like the firm hand he needed was… a little more literal.”

Young stared at him. “He _gets away with murder?”_ he said, disbelieving. _“He_ gets away with murder? How can you sit straight-faced on the other side of this table and say that to me?”

Telford’s lips thinned into a tight line. “It’s very clear to me that you don’t understand the nuances of the project we were carrying out, which, say what I will about Rush, he always found perfectly clear—“

“I’m not _talking_ to Rush,” Young snapped. “I’m talking to _you_ , David—“

“—And frankly,” Telford said, raising his voice, “it’s very clear that you actively _resist_ understanding those nuances. That kind of anti-science, moral-panic attitude is very unattractive, Everett.”

“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind,” Young said icily.

Telford gave an exasperated sigh. “Look, we were trying to permanently modify his thought patterns. Do you understand how difficult that is? It’s not like baking a cake, I’ll tell you that fucking much, especially given our limited understanding of the human brain. It’s one thing to _induce_ the changes. But after that, you also have to find a way to make them _stick_. Anubis had developed a technique that used an electrical impulse for the first part, to induce the new patterns, but then—“

His composure flickered, just for a second, and he swallowed hard. God, Young thought, you gutless fucking wonder. You can’t even talk about it, but you can do it to Rush.

“In order to make the changes permanent,” Telford said, once more breezy and collected, “you have to allow time for the new patterns to imprint. It’s not easy. Especially for someone like Rush. Christ. There’s no way he could— _empty his mind_ to the extent that was necessary. So I helped him.”

“You helped him,” Young repeated, dead-voiced.

“Anubis had access to a gel that would simulate death for a short period of time. It essentially puts one’s body in stasis, which allows for the completion of the imprint.”

“But Homeworld Command didn’t know about this.”

“No,” Telford said evasively.

“But _you_ did.”

“Yes.”

“How?”

Telford said curtly, “How do you _think?_ ”

“The Lucian Alliance.”

“Their intelligence was really very impressive.”

“I’m sure it was,” Young said. His hands, seemingly out of his control, had clenched into fists. “I’m sure it was everything you’d hoped it would be _.”_

“Oh, fuck off,” Telford snapped. “I was _compromised_. And even if I hadn’t been, it was _part of the protocol_. The whole project would have been _useless_ without it. _Years_ of work.”

“But you didn’t bother telling Rush.”

“He would have wanted to know where I’d gotten the information. It would have raised inconvenient questions.”

“So instead you just let him walk into it,” Young said, fury leaking into the words. “You let him walk into that lab, totally unprepared, not knowing what you were going to do him—“

“He knew the risks involved!” Telford hissed, bringing the flat of his hand down on the table. “He volunteered for the project! Jesus Christ, you make it sound like I was trying to murder him. I’m not a monster. I wouldn’t have left him there alone. I stayed with him the whole time. Not that he appreciated it. The fucking silent treatment, that was all I got afterwards—”

“You stayed with him,” Young repeated. His voice had gone very quiet.

Telford seemed to recognize the danger in his tone. “I—“ he began warily.

“You _stayed with him?_ ” Young said again, louder. “You son of a bitch. You _held him under.”_

Telford’s face betrayed a hint of surprise, quickly masked. “It was _easier_ ,” he said. “I could tell he was going to be a problem. And we were on a timetable.”

“A fucking timetable for _what?_ ”

“It was the perfect opportunity to hand him over to the LA. To Kiva.”

“Jesus Christ,” Young said, and had to drop his head into his hands.

“When the LA ship showed up, the Daedalus beamed us out. That’s what fucked his head up. He was supposed to stay in stasis for at least an hour, but he only got thirty minutes or so.” His mouth curled. “ _Half-baked_ might be an accurate description. That’s why we all assumed the project had failed. Rush was different, but not in the ways we needed. He was faster at everything, but… panicky. Volatile. Unreliable. A nervous wreck.”

“I wonder _why_ ,” Young said savagely, almost under his breath.

“I find it interesting,” Telford said, fixing Young with a thoughtful look, “that he told you what happened. He always told _me_ he didn’t remember any of it. That’s what he told everyone. I should have guessed it was just another lie. The thing about Nick is, it’s lies all the way down. _All_ the way down. He’s got this habit of lying to _himself_. You’ve got to really dig the truth out of him. You’ve got to push hard to get him to face up to it. And by that point… I figured there was no reason to push him.”

“Because he was _broken_ ,” Young bit out.

“Well, what would you call it? His brain was fried. He couldn’t do the math. Look, I like the guy, Everett. Liked. Whatever. He’s a scrapper. He’s got a lot of juice. Like I said, he’s fucking spectacular. But _God_ he takes a lot of effort. Back then, it was all cost and no benefit.”

“And now there’s something in it for you again,” Young said flatly. “So here you are.”

“In it for _me?_ ” Telford said. He stared at Young for a moment, his eyes black and hard and defiant. His mouth curved in a kind of smirk. “You really don’t get it. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Your ambitions have always been… limited. Nick, though— don’t fool yourself that _he_ doesn’t get it. The two of you—“ he gestured between Young and the open air. “You’re not playing the same game.”

“And you think you are?”

The smirk lingered. “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”

There was a short silence.

“I _am_ interested, though,” Telford said, “to know what game you _think_ you’re playing. I’ve put my cards on the table. I’ve been perfectly upfront with you. So now I want to know what’s going on with you and Rush.”

Young folded his arms across his chest, hoping he was pulling off the same level of composure. “The ship neurally connected me to Rush.”

Telford looked at him without speaking. “Neurally,” he said at length. “As in— mentally? You’re talking about some sort of, what, psychic bond?”

Young laughed shortly. “That sounds a little bit New Age, don’t you think? My job is just to keep his consciousness from merging with the ship when he works with it to do— you know— what he does.”

“Do you hear his thoughts? Feel what he feels?” Telford had leaned forward, his expression intense.

“His thoughts are uninterpretable to me,” Young said, which was… truthful, if misleading. “I just try to keep the ship from pulling him out of his head.”

“So in the gateroom…”

“Rush was interacting extensively with Destiny to keep the gate closed. It took enormous effort on both our parts for him not to get… you might think of it as annexed. Annexed by the ship. The mental strain manifests as physical exhaustion.”

Young was aware that he sounded like Rush. From the look on Telford’s face, Telford had also had this realization. Young remembered what he’d said about knowing Rush’s tricks. No doubt he knew this one too: the clear, clinical explanations that obscured uncomfortable truths.

“And you don’t think this _compromises_ you?” Telford asked mildly. “You don’t think it interferes with your ability to command?”

Young shrugged. “I don’t see why it would.”

“You _collapsed_ in the middle of an emergent situation. You were completely irrational in your interactions with me. You—“

Young’s radio crackled. “Scott to Young. Please come in.”

Young stared at Telford coolly. “You’ll excuse me.”

Telford made an impatient gesture.

“Go ahead, Scott,” Young said.

“Um, sorry to bother you, sir, but we’ve got a little bit of a situation down here. Volker and Brody turned on a piece of equipment in one of the labs, and—“

“ _Again?”_

“Uh, yeah. Like I said— sorry. It’s just, we’re not really sure what it does, but it’s definitely doing _something_ , and the last time—“

Young glanced at Telford. “Last time we got time loops,” he said.

Telford was looking like a lit fuse, though, and it wasn’t because of the science team. “If you want me,” he said shortly, “to put up with your goddamn chain of command, then—“

Young rolled his eyes. “Right,” he said. He raised the radio again. “Lieutenant, I’m actually off-shift at the moment. So you should really be talking to Colonel Telford.”

There was a brief silence.

“I apologize, sir,” Scott said. “I’m not used to having two senior officers, and the duty roster—“

“No need to apologize,” Young said. “I happen to be with Colonel Telford, so I’ll send him in your direction. Where are you at?”

“Across from the machine shop,” Scott said. “It’s, uh— pretty lit-up. He’ll know it when he gets there.”

“Okay. Colonel Telford will be there shortly.”

Telford and Young looked at each other.

“We are not done with this conversation,” Telford said tightly as he stood.

“Somehow I didn’t think I was that lucky,” Young said dryly. “Look, let me know if this thing Brody and Volker turned on is going to blow up the ship or— I don’t know— phase shift us into the sun. Otherwise, I’m going to get some sleep.”

He too rose and headed for the doorway, where he and Telford parted ways: Telford heading to the left, and Young heading to the right, towards his quarters.

Young gave Telford a two-minute lead before abruptly reversing his direction. He headed at a brisk clip down the maze of hallways that led to the chair room, scanning for any stray kinos or personnel in his path. Because it was late, the corridors were empty. Normally, that kind of emptiness gave Destiny the quality of a ghost ship, but on this particular night, Young was grateful for it.

When he reached the chair room, he rapped quietly on the door: one long, one short, then three long. _TJ._

The door slid open to reveal Greer standing just inside. “Right on time, sir,” he said in an undertone, glancing warily out at the hallway before beckoning Young in.

Just beside the chair, Rush lay wrapped in blankets. TJ was kneeling next to him, adjusting his IV lines, and Chloe was helping to hold up the bags. Eli was working at one of the monitor banks; he looked up as Young entered, then quickly looked down again.

“Telford’s with Scott, Brody, and Volker,” Young said by way of greeting. He was feeling too tense to bother with pleasantries. “We should have about eight hours, assuming nothing goes wrong. We’ll just have to hope that’s enough time.”

“What’s the final verdict?” TJ asked. “Do we want to keep him sedated in the interface?”

Young shook his head. “Pull it out. He’s going to need to be able to access all his… you know.”

“You’ll only have a few minutes before he starts to wake up,” TJ said. She was already pulling the IV lines, quickly bandaging their pinprick wounds.

Young and Greer knelt to lift Rush off the floor. They maneuvered themselves awkwardly to position him in the chair, draping his arms where the restraints would lock over them.

In the dark cavern of his head, Young could already feel something stirring. It expressed itself as a headache first— then as quick flowerings of consciousness too brief and fragmented to follow. They weren’t even images or words.

Gently, Young tipped Rush’s head back. The chair’s restraints locked into place. Rush’s hands flexed slightly in response.

The neural bolts engaged.

Once again, there was nothing in Young’s mind but darkness.

Young looked at Rush, locked to the chair, and then looked away. He caught Eli’s anxious eye, which he hadn’t intended, and moved over to the monitor bank to stand beside him. “How’s it going?” he murmured.

“Um.” Eli fidgeted. “There’s a lot of information transfer going both ways.”

“Okay,” Young said.

They stood for a moment in silence.

“I,” Eli started, and then stopped. “I kind of…”

Young waited.

“I was an asshole,” Eli said in a low voice.

“Eli—“

“No— look. I know I was. You don’t have to, like, make excuses for me.”

“I wasn’t going to make excuses,” Young said. “You _were_ an asshole. I’d argue you owe Chloe the apology, not me.”

“Yeah,” Eli muttered. “I already—“

“Good. Then we’re good. Sometimes people are assholes. It’s one of the laws of the universe.”

“So you’re not mad at me?”

“Eli,” Young said. He waited till Eli looked up at him, then nodded at the interface chair and its occupant.

“Yeah,” Eli said quietly. “But that’s kind of… a different situation. Isn’t it.”

They looked at each other.

“Maybe I’m just building up a tolerance to assholes,” Young said. He tried to manage a smile.

Eli made the same effort. Neither of them was wholly successful at it.

Chloe approached them, hugging her arms tight to her body. “How long do you think it’s going to take?” she asked. “Before he’s— back together?”

Eli jerked his eyes back to the monitor. “I don’t know,” he said somberly. “Maybe a long time.”

* * *

It took almost seven hours.

Seven hours, before the informational flux faded to zero, and the side panel released from the interface.

Young pushed himself up from the floor, where he’d been sitting wearily, and went to it, eying its ghostly handprint with something closer to relief than fear. All the same, he hesitated before touching it.

“Be careful,” TJ said quietly, from beside the chair.

Young looked at her without speaking.

Then he was pushing his hand against the panel, and into the ship.

He felt it around him like a tangible landscape, dark and full of texture. It had become less fearful and more transparent to him, maybe because he was looking at it with part of Rush’s mind now. He still couldn’t make any sense of it. But it could make sense of _him_ ; it knew him, and it didn’t want him to be afraid. It was— trying to help him. Trying to help him find Rush, who was there, and yet— very, very far in the dark. Not because the ship was hiding him there, but because Rush was in some fashion hiding himself. Or not Rush, but whatever became of Rush when he dissolved into pieces. When thirty percent of him went into being someone else, and the remainder… well, God knew what had happened to it. Or them.

They were _not happy_ , those little parts of Rush. The ship kept giving up their hiding places, leading Young to them, and their instinct was to run away from Young, skittering off into the further darkness. _Hey_ , Young thought at them. _It’s okay. It’s just me._ And that was fine; they liked him, and came to nuzzle at his fingers, like wild animals that he had tamed, but when it was time to try to put them back together, they got very restive. Being put back together seemed like a bad idea to them. They had a sense that it would hurt. _It might,_ Young thought. _But you can’t stay here forever._ They were of the opinion that they could. They got very haughty at being told what they could and couldn’t do. _Well, I’m not going to stay here forever_ , Young said. Why not, they wheedled. _Because I’m a person. You’re supposed to be a person, too. Sometimes being a person hurts, but the upside is that you get me trying to make it hurt less._ Debate. They really wanted to stay with him. Their primary emotion at this point was fear, and Young was the only thing they weren’t afraid of. He got the sense they thought they could hide behind him from whatever it was they _were_ afraid of, even though what they were mostly afraid of were abstract concepts like “obliteration” and “separateness.” _Come on,_ Young said. _There’s good stuff about being a person, too._ He tried to communicate the memory of kissing Rush, kind of unsure whether Rush would even think this qualified as “good stuff.” It was sort of a general mishmash of kissing Rush outside the gateroom, and again outside the control interface room, and Rush or not Rush or _whoever_ toppling him over into the sagebrush and pressing eagerly against his mouth. The pieces of Rush were intrigued by this prospect, though they didn’t fully understand it, and Young could almost _start_ to feel a version of Rush emerging that did. _Come back_ , he said to that very nascent, wavering presence. _Please come back. I could give you lots of good reasons, but mostly— mostly I just want you to come back._

So Rush did.

His mind crashed into Young’s with all the grace and subtlety of a wrecking ball. Young doubled over, disabled by a headache that made even breathing seem like hard work. Then for a minute—

they were in Atlantis and they were not in Atlantis and they did not know where they were and the girl with the gray eyes and the needle and David had— under water— and the hospital skylights and the girl with dark hair and it hurt and they covered their heads with their hands but it did not stop hurting and someone had said they would try to make it hurt less but it was _not_ hurting less and Atlantis was leaving and they would never ever see it again and the gateroom and it was hurting and _no_ they would not _let_ anyone _leave_ them again the way that Atlantis had left them and Atlantis was a girl with golden hair and Atlantis was underneath the water and Atlantis was a house they had rebuilt by hand—

They pulled away abruptly but could not pull away— they were too tangled in themselves, and then there was no longer a they and Rush was staggering up out of the interface chair, full of blind panic. He lurched towards the nearest monitor bank, which fritzed at the touch of his hand, making a staticky sound and exploding in sparks.

“Whoa, what the _hell?_ ” Eli said, jumping back from it.

“Dr. Rush?” Chloe said worriedly from the far side of the room.

“I think maybe everyone should just— back off,” Young said, his voice low and tight. “He’s— pretty confused right now.”

Rush was shivering violently and didn’t seem to have his eyes open. Young was close enough to him to feel some kind of energy coming off him. It was like the strange air surrounding a lightning storm.

“Rush,” he said carefully, squinting past his headache, “it’s okay. You’re okay. Everything’s okay, genius.”

Rush made a hurt, confused sound and folded his arms over his head, like he was trying to protect himself from an assault that the world itself was staging. The lights in the room went out completely, then flared into a too-bright brilliance, humming and spitting electricity, until finally they dimmed.

“It’s okay,” Young said again in a soothing voice, approaching him gingerly with his hands held out. “I know your head really hurts right now. Things are probably— a little hard to understand. But I promise it’s okay.”

Rush didn’t move. His whole body was tense and shuddering, his breath coming very fast. Young reached out very cautiously, trying to signal his intentions, and put a hand on his back. Rush flinched, but didn’t pull away, so Young tried moving a little bit closer. “It’s okay,” he murmured. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

“ _Quod adcadevad?”_ Rush whispered without opening his eyes. “ _Quor ne te teneo? Noutrom dolhet. Quod nobei adcadevad?”_

“English,” Young said quietly, smoothing his hand over Rush’s back. “You’ve got to speak English. Remember?”

 _“Ne te_ teneo _,”_ Rush said, sounding agonized and panicked. He backed away. _“Aliquis erzaneos est!”_

“Okay. It’s okay. Don’t worry about,” Young said quickly, working to keep his tone soothing. “Don’t worry about it right now.”

He jerked his head at Eli. Eli came uneasily forward. _Talk to him_ , Young mouthed. _Keep him calm._

“Um,” Eli said, keeping his distance from Rush. “ _Me tenes?”_

 _“Scilecet te teneo!_ ” Rush said loudly, jerking his head up and staring at Eli. _“Quod erzaneos est? Quor—“_ He made a helpless gesture.

“ _Ternsquilete,”_ Eli said. _“Epnia duena sent. Hod id?”_

 _“Ne’m!_ ” Rush said. “ _Duena_ nessent! _Neli me deicere_ ternsquilete _!”_ He slammed the flat of his palm against the side of the monitor bank, which gave an electronic squeal, fizzed, and went blank.

The charged feeling in the air heightened. Young’s radio crackled, where it was clipped to his belt, and started scanning from channel to channel, picking up only bursts of static. TJ’s did the same, then Greer’s, then Eli’s, then Chloe’s.

Young swallowed. He could feel the hair on his arms standing on end.

“Um,” Eli said. “Yeah, he’s not super on board with calming down.”

“How do I say _trust me?_ ” Young asked in an undertone.

“ _Megei feithe,_ I think?”

“ _Megei feithe,”_ Young said to Rush. “Okay? Okay, Nick?”

Rush shook his head unsteadily. He had hugged his arms very tightly across his chest.

Eli whispered, “ _Okay_ is _hod id._ Or— like— _duenos._ It’s all good. _Epnia duena sent._ ”

 _“_ What about _warm?_ ”

“ _Caledos.”_

“Nick,” Young said, getting Rush’s attention. “I’m— um, _ego_. _Caledos._ Remember? You’re really cold right now. External heat sources help. _Ego— caledos. Hod id? Megei feithe?”_ He reached out again and very tentatively touched Rush’s shivering back. He exerted just the slightest, coaxing pressure, a suggestion that Rush could come closer if he wanted. He was trying to very gingerly broadcast a memory of Rush curled against him in bed, the rabbity beat of Rush’s heart racing against his ribcage, Young’s arm draped securely over him.

Rush twitched and looked at him suspiciously, edging minutely closer. _“Caledos,_ ” he said. “ _Sola causa est.”_

Young laughed shakily. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I know what that means. Not sure if I believe it, but— let’s go with that. _Sola causa est._ ”

Something in Rush’s demeanour seemed to relax. He nodded sharply, adopting the thinnest veneer of imperiousness. “ _Hod id_ ,” he said. He hesitated— then inched slowly forwards, until he was close enough to finally himself slump against Young’s chest.

Young exhaled and brought both arms up around him. “ _Hod id_ ,” he murmured. “Yeah. God, I missed you.”

The static of the radios slowly faded, and the lights in the room returned to their normal strength. The pressure in the air seemed to have risen, or abated, or whatever it was that pressure did. Still, there was something fragile and unsettled in it, like the whole world was made of blown glass and the slightest wrong move could shatter it.

“We should get him to the infirmary,” TJ whispered. “Do you think he’s okay with that? I don’t want him shorting out the monitors if…”

 _“Ad noscomeiom emos,”_ Eli said to Rush. “ _Hod id?_ ”

Rush gave a listless shrug.

“Yeah, I don’t really think he cares,” Young said. He tried brushing tentatively against Rush’s mind, the lightest _?_ , but was rebuffed with unexpected violence. He must have jerked in response, because Rush brought his arms up and closed his fists in the back of Young’s jacket. Talk about your mixed signals. He tried it again— _? —_ with pretty much the same reaction: a sensation like he was getting smacked away, and Rush’s hands tightening on their fistfuls of jacket. //Fine. Whatever,// he projected somewhat irritably at Rush, who sent the same mental resistance back at him. “I think we can go for it,” he said to TJ.

They made their way through the silent halls. Rush was leaning against Young’s shoulder and walking like a drunk, lurching from step to step. It was oh six hundred hours, and Young was oddly reminded of sneaking back on base after an all-nighter. He’d always been the sober one then, too, the one trying to get his buddies to walk in a straight line as the sun turned the sky blue from under the horizon. There was no sky here, of course, but it still felt like dawn, and it was easier to imagine Rush was drunk than that he was— whatever he was right now.

He tried to broadcast the thought very carefully to Rush— something totally innocuous and wordless that Rush would no doubt love to mock— but Rush slapped him away. Rush seemed to be absorbed in some manic kind of private mental project. Down in that black cavern that was still troublingly devoid of life, he was sifting through what looked like a river delta of made of fragmented data, or maybe the silt left behind after a flood. Each particle was about the size of a pebble, but they were pebbles of sound and information and emotion and light, and the more Rush picked up fistfuls of them, the more they churned together in uneasy combinations that made Young feel intensely sick.Rush kept trying to come up with the right order, mixing and matching them according to some obscure set of rules, like his entire world was a puzzle he was having to rebuild after someone had come along and torn it to pieces. There weren’t even _memories_ , not even _bits_ of memories, just—

 

he                                   w                                                                     _Lantea_ sc __ glaiket

 

 _aliquobid_ e4    very _discedet_ hurt

 

   de humanization                            c5                                 _nosc_                 paleontology _aet_ Strauss? Tch

 

                              f ractalshe                       _uervis_           _fei_               getting hitstochastic sigma  !

 

Ross-Littlewood oCatte                          Street beautifulb     e    a    u   t 

 

                 shields _parcursens_             _acua_ he this is     FEAR

 

 _lura_ g6 a5                    wa      s

 

//Don’t do that,// Young said, which only made Rush intensify his efforts, scrabbling through the huge drifts of data with a hard, fierce, frantic determination, and before Young even had time to say, _No, really, stop_ , they were both

_snatched back into the silent dark because he did not hear them coming with their swans-wings flutter the abnormal alien sound of their feet and their fingers are on him clutching him so hard they will leave bruises but that is the least of what they will do to him and because this is a memory he knows it already that next comes the water and next comes— next comes—_

Young did _not_ want to be there at _all,_ and so he _yanked—_

 _—them into O’Malley’s, but O’Malley’s usually isn’t open_  
_around midday, so they must have commandeered the place,_  
_because the sun is streaming through the windows, as much_  
_as the sun ever streams into a place like O’Malley’s, where_  
_night seems to have got stained into the wood along with the_  
_thousands of spilled Coors Lights and Guinnesses, although_  
_Young has always found that makes for kind of a comforting_  
_smell, the smell of all those years of men before him who_  
_had sat in the same place looking out at the same night and_  
_he feels connected to them, like the spilled beer acts as_  
_some kind of invocation to their ghosts. He bets Rush_  
_has a different opinion,_ _but when he turns to look at Rush—_

  
_next comes the glass box filled_  
_with water that you cannot get out of_  
_and you might shriek but no one will ever_  
_hear and you might flail but your fists_  
_will never reach another person_  
_so you are alone screaming and kicking_  
_at yourself_

  
_—Rush is staring at the bar’s piano with a pretty haunted_  
_kind of look and Young says Oh right I forgot that’s what_  
_I wanted to show you, I guess this was just the first place_  
_I thought of, or, okay, I’ll be totally honest, I also think I_  
_deserve a drink, but this knocks both of those birds right_  
_out of their branches. You want something to drink? Rush_  
_doesn’t say anything and Young says Oh that’s right you’re_  
_giving me the silent treatment. Okay, well, I guess you can’t_  
_complain if you get stuck with, like, a Rolling Rock. Actually,_  
_you not being able to complain is going to mark a whole new_  
_phase in our relationship. But then Rush makes a mute,_  
_choppy, frustrated gesture and Young feels bad for poking_  
_fun at him. He says, It’s okay. You don’t have to talk. I_  
_won’t even give you a Rolling Rock, I swear. Just— chill_  
_out for a while. Rush blinks at him, looking uncertain—_

 and Young reeled out of the not-quite-dream not-quite-memory as Rush wrenched their minds apart so violently that Young had to catch himself on a corridor wall. He felt abruptly queasy again. “Jesus Christ!” he said involuntarily. “What the fuck!”

 _“Ne facie_ ,” Rush snapped, and Eli said, “He says, Don’t.”

“You tell _him_ don’t!” Young said. “ _Ne— face_ or whatever.” //Don’t do that!// he projected at Rush for good measure. //Not okay!//

“I thought we were all getting along now,” Greer said warily.

// _Iacte scorax,_ // Rush projected, thin and brittle as sharp glass, and mentally pushed him away.

“Eli,” Young said, “What does _iacte scorax_ mean?”

“Uh,” Eli said.

“Does it happen to mean _fuck you?_ ”

“It’s… more of an idiomatic…”

“Okay. I got it.”

Rush glared fiercely at him.

“You’re such an asshole,” Young said tiredly. “Could you just stop— doing whatever you’re doing?”

“ _Is deicet, Absiste quod,_ uh, _facies? En mentid,_ I guess?” Eli said.

Rush’s response was to increase his efforts again, hurling himself into the riverbank of data and dredging up swirling chunks of it, bewildering flashes of letters-numbers-code that weren’t even interpretable, or at least not to Young. Being connected to his head was like— Young vaguely remembered watching _A Clockwork Orange_ at some point in his twenties, and, yeah, it was pretty much like that. “God,” he said, feeling nauseated. //Could you _please_ stop—//

_plunging into the water which is a weight and a restraint and it makes him slow which he cannot stand that is what he cannot stand the slowness and if he focuses on the slowness he will not think about the restraint, how he can’t FIGHT against the water which is what he needs to be doing but then again maybe you fight against the water by giving into it and is this it? the key that has long eluded him? submission? is this how you defeat the strength that can’t be subsumed? like a Chinese finger-trap? the harder you pull the more it traps you so instead he rips the mask off his face and he breathes IN he chokes and the spasm of his lungs says fuck you fuck you and his pulse is racing he is dying except—_

_I don’t think there used to be a piano here, Young says_  
_uncertainly, staring at the living room, where he’s_  
_pretty sure there used to be just a fireplace and_  
_a Navajo rug, because you really don’t get a whole_  
_lot of the fancy trimmings in these cabins, with_  
_folks coming in and out, but there sure is a piano,_  
_just sort of sitting there by the window, and a nice_  
_one, too, at least it looks like a nice one, with a kind_  
_of walnutty glow. He turns to look at Rush, who’s drip-_  
_ping water all over as usual, and Rush is sort of_  
_staring at the piano, and Young says, Oh, right, I forgot,_  
_you’re giving me the silent treatment—_

  
_hod_  
_interdeicatom_  
_est_  
_et_  
_ne_  
_potisset—_

  
_Well, I mean, God forbid anyone tell you what to do, but_  
_you could at least go dry off before you give my furniture_  
_that judging look. You’ll note that I know you well enough_  
_not to say “don’t judge my furniture” because you’d prob-_  
_ably, I don’t know, explode. Rush_ almost _smiles at that, and_  
_Young says, Hey, okay, so I’m not just talking to a stone_  
_wall. Rush shakes his head and makes a complicated_  
_gesture. What, are we playing Charades? Young asks._  
_Circuits. Jumper cables. Telephone wires. Freeways._  
_Genius, I don’t think you know how to play charades. Rush_  
_scowls at him. What? You’re terrible. Couldn’t you just_  
_write it down for me? Rush makes a frustrated noise and_  
_shakes his head again, balling his fists up and looking like_  
_he’s headed for “furious.” Okay, okay, Young said, holding_  
_up his hands. I get it. It’s fine.We’ll just chill out for a little—_

 

Rush ripped their minds apart again. This time, the shock made Young double over. The world was heaving in circles around him, and he _really_ thought he might be about to throw up.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he demanded, wincing. “Could you _not?_ ”

Rush shoved him.

“Oh, yeah, like this is _my_ fault. Very mature reaction. Stop acting like a toddler!”

Eli said, sounding weary, “ _Is deicet, Absiste. Neli sicut infans agere.”_

Rush shoved Young again, harder, looking somewhere between absolutely murderous and almost on the verge of tears.

“Okay, whoa,” Greer said, stepping between them. “I think we need some time-outs here. Eli, can you—“

Eli rolled his eyes and towed Rush a few feet away.

“How is that going to give me a time-out from him in my _head?_ ” Young said, irked. “Eli, get him to cut it out.”

Eli sighed. “ _Quod facies?”_ he asked Rush. “Colonel Young, um, _id miset. Id em dolhet?_ Sort of? _”_

“ _Ne’emo me deicet quod adcadcadat!”_ Rush said loudly. “ _Se iacead scorax! Ne’emo me_ pulla _deicet et ne scio et— ne memonaisse potissum, nehil ne_ pulla _memonaisse potissum—“_ He lashed out at the corridor wall with his fist. The lights flickered.

“No, no no no no,” Greer said, backing up a step. “We’re not doing that again, Doc.”

But Rush had already more or less exhausted himself, and was leaning against the wall now, drained and miserable.

“He said no one will fucking tell him what happened, and he can’t remember,” Eli said, looking chastened. “And, also, that you can go fuck yourself. In case you missed that part.”

Young buried his head in his hands, feeling pretty miserable for his own part. “Can you just— explain the gist of it? Will that hold him till we get to the infirmary?”

“Right. Yeah. Just explain an alien invasion to him,” Eli said under his breath. But he launched into: “ _Ho Nakai weisom mithevand per portam? Numc epnia duena sent, ut…”_

That seemed to keep Rush distracted enough, at least, that he wasn’t digging around into that blisteringly incomprehensible heap of data again. It didn’t help their shared headache, but it meant that Young’s nausea lessened. He trailed along behind Rush and Eli, massaging his forehead.

He was surprised when, after a few moments, Chloe slipped her arm into his. She’d been following them like a shadow since the chair room, without a sound. “I’m pretty sure he’s scared,” she murmured. “That’s usually when he gets angry.”

“Yeah, well,” Young said tightly. “Surprisingly, that doesn’t really help.”

“No. I know.” She ducked her head, her hair half-covering her face. “I can make you a list of Ancient words. If you want.”

“Since when do you speak Ancient?”

She shrugged and looked away. “It was easy. The science team all learned.”

Young sighed. “Easy. Right.” For a moment he was silent. “Why can’t he speak English?” he whispered finally. “He’s always been able to speak English before.”

Chloe was quiet. “Sometimes, you know, with brain injuries, strange things happen. And then the brain has to figure out new ways to work. This is— I mean, it’s sort of like a brain injury, isn’t it? So maybe you need to be patient.”

“Yeah,” Young said dully. “Maybe.”

Chloe squeezed her hand on his arm.

Up ahead, Eli and Rush had entered the infirmary. TJ had gone on in front of them, and was already hustling Rush towards a gurney in back. He was ignoring her in favor of shooting aggressive questions at Eli, who looked harried. As Young and Chloe approached, Rush shifted the bulk of his active ignoring onto Young, and focused his attention on Chloe.

“ _Salhwes?”_ he demanded, letting TJ guide him up onto the gurney. “ _Tu salhwes?_ Chloe?”

“ _Itave_ ,” she said in a small voice. “ _Nehil megei adcadevad. Nehil._ ”

“ _Weros n’est_ ,” Rush murmured, frowning. “ _Eli me deicevad.”_

 _“Quod te deicevad?”_ she said, looking anxious. “ _Nehil megei adcadevad. Epnia_ tegei _adcadevand. Et ei.”_

Rush clearly wanted to say more to her, but TJ showed up that point with a tray of protein paste and Gatorade, which she placed in Rush’s lap without so much as a by-your-leave.

“He has to eat,” she said defensively, at Young’s look. “He hasn’t eaten in three days.”

Rush made a face at the bowl of protein paste. “ _Quod pulla hod?”_ he demanded.

“If you keep it down, you can have an MRE later,” TJ said, unmoved. “Aren’t you impressed that you get real Gatorade this time?”

Rush was clearly not impressed. He picked up the spoon with an expression of disgust and let the white paste drip from it.

“Eat,” TJ said firmly, staring meaningfully at him.

“ _Werthom magicom ne deicevas,”_ Rush said, giving her a challenging look.

TJ rolled her eyes. “Are you kidding me? Fine. _Please_ eat. Or do I need to get Eli to say it in Ancient?”

Rush shrugged, looking resigned. “ _Vadedue_ ,” he said, and ate a distinctly unexcited mouthful.

Chloe whispered, suppressing a smile, “That means _whatever_.”

“ _Neli ei quod deicens ’som deicere,”_ Rush said sharply to her.

“ _Inportunos sents es_ ,” she flared, looking shocked.

“ _Se iacead scorax,”_ Rush said shortly.

“ _Sollicitatissimos fuevad,”_ Chloe said, her voice rising.

 _“Scio. Hod scio.”_ Rush looked away.

“Um,” Eli said, looking uncomfortable. “—So I think I’m going to bed. Greer, Chloe, do you want to…”

“Yeah,” Greer said, fidgeting. “I think I’ve had about enough fireworks for one day.”

Chloe hesitated. She looked at Young. “Do you want me to stay?”

Young summoned up a smile he didn’t feel. “I think I’ll manage. I get the feeling he doesn’t really want to talk to me. And anyway, he’s going to fall asleep pretty quick.”

“Yeah,” Chloe said quietly. She still gave him a long look before she backed out of the room to follow Eli and Greer.

TJ had left the room when Rush gave in and started eating, so for the moment, Rush and Young were alone. Rush was still ignoring Young with an intense and very obvious expenditure of effort. He was determinedly eating spoonfuls of thin white paste.

“Wow,” Young said, looking down at the deck and swallowing hard. “I got to say, this is not how I imagined this going. I mean, I guess in retrospect— I don’t know why I imagined anything else. This is like the Nicholas Rush classic, right? They should name this move after you. You save someone’s ass, put your career on the line for them, _maybe_ risk melting your brain, and what do you get? A _fuck you_ and a headache. That’s great. That’s just— really great.”

Rush stared down at the tray in his lap. He’d stopped eating. The spoon was clenched in his fist.

“Maybe I should just leave you alone,” Young said, and swallowed again. For some reason he was having a really hard time getting words out. “It’s fucking seven hundred hours, and I was up all night trying to fix your brain, so, you know, I could use some sleep. And I’m sure you could too.” He pushed away from the wall, where he’d been standing, and headed for the door. “I’ll tell TJ to come check in on you before she—“

Rush grabbed his wrist.

Young turned very slowly to look at him.

Rush was still staring fixedly at the tray of food. “ _Elgidos ’som,_ ” he whispered.

“I don’t know what that means,” Young said tiredly.

Rush hunched his shoulders. “ _Caledos es. Tu— caledos es. Ego— elgidos ’som.”_

“Oh,” Young said. He looked down at his wrist. Rush’s fingers _were_ pretty cold. But he wasn’t shivering anymore. “ _Sola causa est?”_

Rush shut his eyes and nodded haltingly. His hand tightened around Young’s wrist.

“That hurts,” Young said. He tried to pull away. Rush wouldn’t let him. “No. It _hurts_ ,” he said again, sharply. He yanked his hand out of Rush’s grasp, which _also_ hurt.

Rush swallowed a short discontented sound.

Young sighed and rolled his sleeves up, showing bandages on both forearms. “God. Not everything is about you, you _asshole._ ”

“ _Quod tegei adcadevad?_ ” Rush demanded, reaching for him, sounding appalled.

“Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

“ _Magnom_ est,” Rush insisted.

“Are you going to let me show you, then?” He tried projecting a brief image of his bound arms to Rush. But the instant he got close to Rush’s mind, he was slapped ferociously back. “No. Of course not.” He shoved Rush’s hands off him and turned away.

“ _Ut—“_ Rush said in a hopeless voice. “ _Tamem. Ne discede. Stae._ ”

“Stay. Right. Because you’re cold? _Elgidos?”_ Young shot him a hard, incredulous look.

Rush nodded, staring at the floor.

“And what’s your next big plan? Kick me out of bed? That kind of feels like where this is headed.”

Rush took an unsteady breath. “Please _,_ ” he whispered.

Young turned to face the wall for minute, wrenching his hands through his hair. “Oh, fuck you. This is so fucking— you’re just fucking _pushing buttons_. You’re too fucked-up to speak English and you’re still just _pushing buttons_ ; you don’t even know what they mean. Magic word, right? The fucking magic word. That’s all you know.”

Rush nodded again. He still wasn’t looking at Young.

“Fine,” Young said, defeated. “Just fucking— fine. You win.” He jerked the food tray out of Rush’s lap and shoved it on a side table. “Whatever. _Vadedue_.”

“ _Vadedue,”_ Rush echoed softly.

“You’re going to have to—” Young said, and gestured shortly that Rush would have to move over.

Rush shifted minutely to the left. Young bent forward to pull the blanket back so he could climb onto the gurney, and as he did so, Rush suddenly leaned forward, brought a hand to the back of his head, and kissed him. It was a hard, desperate, hungry, pleading kiss, not particularly skillful, and Young was so startled by it that he hardly had a chance to reciprocate before Rush was pulling back from him, turning away and curling up on the bed.

“Hey—no,” Young said, dumbfounded. “Wait a minute; you don’t just get to—“

He poked Rush’s shoulder, trying to get him to turn over.

 _“Quod,”_ Rush said, sounding tense and unhappy. He had pulled his knees up to his chest. 

“Hey,” Young said quietly, perching on the edge of the gurney. “I want to talk to you.”

He kept poking Rush’s shoulder insistently until Rush made an irritated noise and turned to face him at last. “ _Quod_ ,” he said again, trying to avoid having to meet Young’s eyes.

Young studied him. “Why did you do that?” he asked gently. “I already said I would stay.”

He didn’t think Rush understood him.

“I,” he said again, pointing at himself. “ _Ego. Deic— deicet?_ Already.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, trying to indicate the past tense. “I already said that _ego stae_.”

“ _Scio_ ,” Rush said quietly.

“So— why?” He made an exaggerated gesture of confusion.

“ _Ne scio._ ”

“That doesn’t sound like an answer.”

Rush reached up and touched his hand very lightly against the bare skin of Young’s throat, where the top two buttons of his uniform jacket weren’t fastened. “ _Ne scio_ ,” he murmured again. “ _Ego imbecilis ’som. Sola causa.”_

Young smiled faintly. “Did you just call yourself stupid?”

Rush frowned and shook his head.

“You definitely did.” He put his hand over Rush’s and left it there for a moment. With his other hand, he reached out and stroked Rush’s hair. “Nick,” he said softly after a while. “What’s going on?”

“ _Ne’emo deicevad ute_ Nick _me nomenare potisseas,”_ Rush whispered.

 _“_ Yeah, but I’m going to keep doing it anyway.”

“ _Ne’m.”_

“Yes.

“ _Ne’m.”_

Young lay down on the gurney, resting his head about an inch from Rush’s. “Yeah, I am,” he said.

Rush shivered and moved closer, pushing his face into Young’s neck like he was some kind of burrowing little animal.

“You’re just using me for my body,” Young whispered, pulling the blanket up over them. “Is that it? Like those dogs that— the way you calm down an anxious puppy is, you wrap an alarm clock in a warm cloth. Put it in a box with them. They think it’s their mother. Or else it makes no difference to them. All they want is a warm body and a ticking noise. I really hope that’s not what you want, Nick. But I’m not sure. You’re pretty fucking confusing.”

“ _Absiste fathlari_ ,” Rush mumbled crossly.

“You better not have just told me to shut up.”

Rush bit him gently on the collarbone.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Young said, closing his eyes. “That is _not_ helping with the— confusion. You— _Tu._ Fucking confusing _es_.”

“ _Ne’m,_ ” Rush murmured.

“Yes, you are.”

“ _Ne’m._ ”

“ _Absiste_ whatever-it-was.”

“Mm.” Rush was more asleep than not, at that point.

“I really did miss you,” Young said soundlessly.

He tightened his arm around Rush.

* * *

 _Young dreams that he’s in the cabin up at Taos. He’s trying to get a fire going. He’s got a freshly-cut stack of pinewood that he thinks will burn really sweet, but for kindling he’s using all these scraps of paper that he’s pulling out of his pockets. They’re torn up bits of his marriage license and his commission, newspaper articles about his high school football team; letters from Emily and from his brothers, which he now realizes weren’t really addressed to him, just like his marriage license and his commission weren’t_ for _him either, and it turns out that even the newspaper articles managed to print the wrong name, so he might as well burn them, and it feels okay, actually, and then someone is knocking at the door._

_He goes to answer it and of course Rush is out there, soaking wet and looking furious._

_“Do you ever actually show up some place dry?” Young asks. “Just out of curiosity.”_

_Rush strips off his jacket, balls it up and throws it at Young’s head._

_Young ducks. “I’m going to assume that’s a_ no _, then,” he says. “I think there’s clean clothes in the bedroom, if you want to go grab some.”_

 _Rush marches past him without saying a word. Although— Rush actually_ can’t _talk, can he? Young had forgotten about that. He can’t remember_ why _Rush can’t talk, but it’s one of those things that happens, like a piano showing up in your living room, which is suddenly twice its previous size._

 _When Rush emerges from the bedroom, looking calmer, clad in a t-shirt advertising the Albuquerque Isotopes_ _and a pair of sweatpants that are several sizes too big, Young says, “I think that piano’s for you, you know. I’m pretty sure that’s why I got it. I mean,_ I _don’t play.”_

_Rush hesitates. His eyes flick over to the piano._

_“I’ve always kind of wanted to hear what you sound like,” Young says. “Not that I know anything about music, and I’m sure that if you could talk, that’s how you’d dodge the issue. Blah blah, what do_ you _know about music, how would you_ appreciate _the_ subtlety _and_ nuance _of my art, it’d be_ wasted _on you, et cetera, et cetera. It’d probably work, too. But that’s the thing about not talking. You don’t get to get away with that shit.”_

_Rush scowls at him and makes a rude gesture._

_“Very sophisticated rhetoric,” Young deadpans._

_Rush makes another gesture indicating where Young can shove the concept of rhetoric._

_“Come on, you might as well play it,” Young says. “I mean, you don’t have to; we can just sit on the couch all afternoon and not talk, but I have a feeling you’re going to find that a little bit boring.”_

_Rush tilts his head, fixing Young with an intense and complicated look._

_“Oh,” Young says softly. He’s aware that he’s blushing. “Well— after a while, you probably would.”_

_Rush shrugs and looks down, hugging his elbows._

_Young clears his throat. “You look ridiculous, by the way. Although I guess the t-shirt kind of suits you.”_

_Rush rolls his eyes. With an impatient lurch, as though he’s dared himself to do it, he makes his way over to the piano. He walks very slowly around it, skimming his hand over the polished wood. Something about it seems to confuse him; he frowns at it for a bit, as though struggling to remember something. At last, very tentatively, he sits down. For a long time, though, he just looks at the keyboard._

_Young says quietly, “It’s okay if you don’t want to.”_

_Rush nods, not looking at him. But eventually he spreads his hands across the keys._

_He starts to play something slow that seems to uncoil from his fingers in long and restful waves. Young can recognize the key as G-flat, which amazes him for a moment, and then he remembers that part of his brain is Rush. But it still amazes him, because it seems like a kind of magic. And maybe because— he’s never really associated Rush with so purposeless a thing as music, something done so purely for beauty’s sake. Maybe he thought that music was, for Rush, really only a question of technical mastery. Like mathematics. But he can tell that it’s not. Even he can tell that it’s not._

_The music halts abruptly after a minute, and Rush pulls his hands back. He’s breathing hard. He stares at the keyboard._

_Young finds that he’s holding his breath. He waits a very, very long, very silent moment before he asks carefully, “Is it okay? The piano?”_

_Rush nods his head jerkily._

_“It’s okay if you don’t— want to keep playing. I just thought it might be—“_

_Rush nods again. He reaches out with a single finger and taps a note: D5._

_“What does that mean? Does that mean you understand?”_

_G4._

_“Is that_ yes?”

_G4._

_“Okay. I don’t think this is really going to get very far as a language, though.”_

_A frown and a very haughty F5._

_Young rolls his eyes. “I should’ve guessed you’d need a one-note word for_ obviously _,” he says._

_Rush smiles, an almost vanishingly brief curve of his lips, before he hits B &4 twice._

_Young has to think about that one. “Are you going to throw stuff at me if I get it wrong?” he asks, which he thinks is not an unreasonable question, considering that Rush has already thrown something at him today._

_Rush shrugs expansively, as though to say: I haven’t decided._

_“Great. That’s very reassuring,” Young says dryly. “What if— what if I think about it, and tell you tomorrow night? Otherwise you won’t come back. You know how you are.”_

_Rush looks like he thinks there’s a trap in there somewhere, but he can’t seem to figure out exactly where it is. There’s something a little… vague about him around the edges, Young notices. Come to think of it, there has been all night. But in the end Rush gives up and sticks his hand out defiantly._

_“Okay, deal,” Young says. “But you better show up.”_

_He walks Rush to the door and opens it. Outside, at the edges of the porch, the landscape has been replaced by a place that looks like if someone took bits and pieces of about a hundred different buildings, climates, timezones, and seasons from all over the Earth, sewed them into one patchwork city, and bombed the hell out of it. The cacophony of it is incredible: children screaming, people shouting in different languages, the moans of the dying, radios shattering windows, water crashing into walls, capacitors charging, guns going off, ships cratered and burning out beside stars, and all of it condensed down to fit this small location, so that it’s crammed in on top of itself, sometimes in six layers or more._

_Rush acts like there’s nothing unusual about this. He walks matter-of-factly out onto the porch._

_“Nick— I don’t think you should go out there,” Young says uneasily._

_Rush frowns at him._

_“It doesn’t seem… safe. Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”_

_Rush gives him an exasperated look, hitches his too-big sweatpants up with as much dignity as he can, and marches off, barefoot, straight into the wasteland._

_“Yeah, what was I thinking,” Young whispers. He watches as Rush grows smaller and smaller in the distance. “I know. You’re always okay.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Quod adcadevad? Quor ne te teneo? Noutrom dolhet. Quod nobei adcadevad?_ = What happened? Why don't I understand you? We hurt. What happened to us?
> 
>  _Aliquis erzaneos est_ = Something's wrong.
> 
>  _Scilecet_ = Of course
> 
>  _Duena nessent! Neli me deicere ternsquilete_ = It's not okay! Don't tell me to calm down!
> 
>  _hod interdeicatom est et ne potisset—_ = This isn't allowed and he can't—
> 
> Colonel Young _id miset. Id em dolhet_ = Colonel Young hates it. It hurts him.
> 
>  _Ne’emo me deicet quod adcadcadat! Se iacead scorax! Ne’emo me pulla deicet et ne scio et— ne memonaisse potissum, nehil ne pulla memonaisse potissum_ = No one's telling me what happened! He can go fuck himself! No one's fucking telling me and I don't know and— I can't remember, I can't fucking remember anything
> 
>  _Salhwes_ = Are you okay?
> 
>  _Nehil megei adcadevad._ = Nothing happened to me.
> 
>  _Weros n'est. Eli me deicevad._ = That's not true. Eli told me.
> 
>  _Quod te deicevad?... Epnia tegei adcadevand. Et ei._ = What did he tell you? Everything happened to you. And to him.
> 
>  _Quod pulla hod?_ = What the fuck is this?
> 
>  _Werthom magicom ne deicevas_ = You didn't say the magic word.
> 
>  _Neli ei quod deicens ’som deicere._ = Don't tell him what I'm saying.
> 
>  _Inportunos sents es._ = You're being rude.
> 
>  _Se iacead scorax._ = He can go fuck himself.
> 
>  _Sollicitatissimos fuevad._ = He was really worried.
> 
>  _Ego imbecilis 'som._ = I'm weak.
> 
>  _Ne’emo deicevad ute Nick me nomenare potisseas._ = No one said you could call me Nick.
> 
>  _Absiste fathlari._ = Stop talking.
> 
> There's something in the next chapter that will make all this stuff a lot easier, btw.
> 
> [Schubert's third Impromptu (Op. 90)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyzUc2vC4JI) is the piece Rush starts to play.


	36. Chapter 36

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Relevant translations in the endnote.

“Colonel.”

The word drifted towards Young through what felt like several walls of steel separating him from the outer world. He was inclined to ignore it— the world couldn’t get to him through those walls, and he was _really_ tired, and Rush was already right here, tucked warm and close against his body, and he couldn’t think of any other reason he might want to move, so—

“Colonel Young. Colonel _Young._ ”

Rush mumbled something and tried to shove his face underneath Young’s shoulder.

“Shh,” Young said vaguely, without opening his eyes. “Don’t—“ He fumbled a protective arm around Rush, exhaled heavily, and proceeded to fall back asleep.

“Colonel Young, you have to _wake up._ ”

Someone was shaking him. He squinted up at them, his head throbbing. The world seemed very blurry and painful, and he wanted to tell whoever it was to go _away._

It was Wray.

He startled, half-sitting-up. “Fuck, Camile—“ Rush made a groggy noise of complaint against him, and Young winced, looking down at him, then up at Wray. Wray seemed to have other concerns, though.

“ _Shh_ ,” she breathed. “Be quiet.”

TJ was arguing with someone in the front room, he realized. “I’m not beholden to any civilian organizations, and the IOA doesn’t own this ship. I’m telling you that you’re _not_ going back there.”

“You don’t have that authority,” Telford snapped. “Colonel Young was the one who confirmed that my team was going to be waking Rush up. If you’ve gone outside the chain of command on this, I will court-martial you so fast that your dizzy little head will spin.”

Telford sounded _extremely_ pissed.

Young cautiously extricated himself from Rush, who’d gotten a pretty good grip on his jacket and, even sleeping, was reluctant to let go of it, and stood— a little too fast. His vision grayed out, and Wray had to let him lean on her for a minute.

“Fuck,” he said under his breath. He couldn’t even imagine what he looked like. He tapped Wray’s shoulder to get her attention and gestured towards his hair and uniform. Wray nodded and started plucking at his curls while he buttoned up his jacket and tried his best to straighten his sleeves.

“Medical decisions are the purview of the chief medical officer,” TJ was saying coldly.

“This isn’t a medical decision,” Telford snapped. “Rush is critical to the functioning of the ship, which makes this a _tactical_ call.”

“A tactical call?” TJ’s voice rose. “A _tactical call?_ ”

Wray frowned at Young and pulled at the creases of his jacket. Young reached over to rearrange Rush’s blankets and sheets. Rush frowned in his sleep.

“Sorry,” Young whispered, laying a brief hand against his head.

Turning away, he accidentally caught Wray’s gaze. He flushed miserably, and she tightened her hand on his forearm. Then, unexpectedly, she stood on her very tiptoes to press a careful kiss against his cheek.

Why that, out of all the things in the last twenty-four hours, should have been the thing that brought him closest to breaking down in tears was beyond explaining. But he stood there for a good minute-and-a-half, trying to stop the backs of his eyes from feeling hot.

“With the ship currently in _no obvious danger_ ,” TJ was saying loudly, “you want to prioritize _tactics_ over the life and wellbeing of a _civilian?_ How’s _that_ going to play with the IOA?”

“This ship is _constantly_ in danger, Lieutenant,” Telford said. “It’s being tracked through an unknown manner by a hostile alien race about whom we know _little_ to _nothing_ , so you’ll forgive me if I consider our basic level of function to be something worth discerning! I’m not _asking_ you to stand aside; I’m _ordering_ you to do it. So—“

Young tried to adopt a casual pose that didn’t also put him at risk of fainting. He settled on leaning against Rush’s gurney. Camile had dropped into the adjoining chair.

“— _excuse_ me?” TJ said hotly. There was the sound of a short struggle.

Telford rounded the frame of the door. He stopped short as he took in Young and Wray, his expression wary.

“Did you just _shove aside_ my chief medical officer?” Young asked incredulously. He tried to keep his voice low, so as not to wake Rush, but he had a bad feeling about the likely volume of the upcoming conversation.

“I may have stepped past her,” Telford said, guarded. His eyes strayed to take in Rush and then returned to Young thoughtfully. “I was under the impression that we’d decided _my_ team was going to take point on the effort to wake Rush up. Unless I’m very much mistaken, Lieutenant Johansen must have disobeyed a direct order.”

Young glanced at TJ. “Did you give her a chance to explain why it was medically necessary to wake him ahead of schedule?” he asked mildly. “Or did you just decide to charge in here?”

“He was developing an allergy to the sedative we were using,” TJ jumped in hurriedly. “I had to take him off it right away.”

“Is that right,” Telford said.

He let the lie sit there for a moment, calling attention to itself.

Abruptly his gaze shifted to Rush. He approached the gurney. “Have you talked to him yet?” he asked, gesturing to Rush’s sleeping body.

“He was pretty out of it,” Young said, his tone controlled. He had a sense that Telford was carefully monitoring his response. “Not surprisingly. We explained what had happened to him, and he seemed to understand it. Lieutenant Johansen’s medical opinion was that he needed to rest.”

“Rest,” Telford said, with an undertone of contempt. He reached out and touched the blanket covering Rush, pinning it to the end of the bed with two fingers.

Young’s gaze was also pinned to that spot. “That was her medical opinion,” he said evenly.

“As I was explaining to Lieutenant Johansen,” Telford said, circling the gurney and letting his fingers trail along the side of it, “the primary concern here isn’t medical. It’s tactical.”

“That’s certainly one opinion,” Young said. His eyes were following those fingers: the path they traced, about three inches away from Rush.

“I’m afraid you’re struggling to make an essential leap here,” Telford said mildly. His eyes flicked up for the briefest second to Young. “I realize it requires a departure from more— _traditional_ lines of thought, but Rush isn’t only a person anymore. He’s also a piece of equipment. I realize that a balance needs to maintained, of course— I would never want to infringe on anyone’s rights—“

He paused just slightly and stared at Young, as though daring him to make a scene. When Young failed to protest, his mouth twitched slightly: triumph.

“—but his essential role as part of this ship also can’t be neglected,” Telford continued. “His functional status should have been assessed _immediately_. If you have concerns about the way I’ve evaluated the situation, maybe you should—“

Wray said coolly, “Take them up with the IOA?” She uncrossed her legs and stood, looking remarkably imposing. “Yes, let’s. After all, Dr. Rush is a civilian, and therefore not subject to military authority. The responsibility for safeguarding his rights therefore falls to me, at least until such time as the Destiny comes under attack. There will be no regime of emergency on board this ship. If _you_ have concerns about the way _I’ve_ evaluated the situation, then you should feel free to address them to my superiors. At that point, I’m sure we can have a free, frank, and fully-informed discussion about the Stargate program’s dealings with Dr. Rush.” Her eyes rested briefly on Telford. “Until then, I’m siding with Lieutenant Johansen’s medical opinion that the best thing for Dr. Rush is rest. I want _both_ of you out of here for the time being, and I don’t want more military personnel cluttering up this room. Is that clear?”

Telford pressed his lips into a thin line. He drew his hand back from the gurney. “Yes.”

“Fair enough,” Young said. He was a hell of a lot happier about leaving Rush with TJ and Wray than he would have been letting anybody on Telford’s team have access. “Shall we just—?” He motioned Telford towards the door.

They’d barely made it out of the infirmary before Telford turned on him.

“You really want Johansen involved in your little game?” Telford said conversationally. “You must be one hell of a lay if she’s willing to risk her career just to—“

“Fuck you,” Young said, resisting the urge to hit him, but just barely. “ _My_ little game? What the fuck was that in there?”

Telford spread his hands. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“Stay the hell away from Rush.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Everett.”

“You want to fucking test me?”

Telford laughed. “That’s sweet, but— I’m not your problem. Your problem is lying back there in that infirmary bed. You’re trying to protect a man who doesn’t need or want your protection. He got himself involved in all of this. You think that when he wakes up he’s just going to— what— cower behind you? Ask yourself how much that sounds like Rush.”

“I think we’ve been through this,” Young said curtly. He turned to walk in the opposite direction.

“I’m just trying to save you the trouble.”

“Yeah, that’s awfully nice of you,” Young shot back over his shoulder, and kept walking.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you!” Telford called after him.

* * *

Young slept uneasily for three hours in his quarters, and woke to find a note taped to his door. In Chloe’s very beautiful, practiced handwriting, it read:

_Maybe Dr. Rush will remember English tomorrow, but in case not I thought you might want this. In general, things that start with “ne” mean “no” or “not” or “don’t.” It’s a lot like Latin but sometimes not. Also this does not deserve to go on the list, but he will probably say it, so se iacere scorax is the phrase “to fuck oneself,” not literally but that is the meaning. And pulla is rude. Please try to have a constructive conversation! I have included some examples._

_I’m sorry                             Me penitet (me PEN-i-tet)_  
_I know                                 Scio (SHEE-oh)_  
_Okay                                   either Duenos (DWEN-os) (= good) or Hod id (hohd id) (=sure/I guess)_  
_Please                                 Quaesso (QWEYE-soh)_  
_Yes                                     Itave (EE-tah-vay)_  
_No                                      Neum (NAY-um) (I think he says “nem” but this may be an accent?)_  
_I don’t understand              Ne teneo (nay ten-AY-oh)(“I don’t understand you” would be “Ne te teneo”)_  
_That’s good                        Duenos est (see above)_  
_That’s a bad idea                Mala idea est (MAHL-uh ee-DAY-a est) (If something is a good idea it’s “duena idea”)_  
_Stop                                    Absiste (ab-SIS-tay)_  
_Rude                                  Inportunos (in-por-TOO-nohs)_  
_Don’t do that                     Neod facie (NAY-ohd FAH-chee-ay) or Neli estod facere (NAY-lee EST-ohd FA-chur-ay)_  
_[something] hurts              Dolhet (DOHL-et) — > me caputei dolhet = my head hurts (you say lit. “there is pain at my head”)_  
_I think that…                      Cresdo quod (CRAYS-do qwohd)_  
_I said that…                       Deicevam quod (DAY-che-vahm qwohd)_  
_I wish that…                       Welho quod (WEH-lo qwohd)_  
_Do you want to…               Welhes… (WEH-les)_  
_I hope that…                      Sparo quod (SPAHR-oh qwohd)_  
_Are you okay                      Salhwes (SAHL-ways)_  
_Go to sleep                        Dormie (DOR-mee-ay)_  
_I can                                  Potissum (poh-TIS-sum)_  
_Why                                   Quor (QWOR)_  
_In my head/In your head   En meod mentid/ En towod mentid (in MAY-ohd/TOH-wod MEN-tid)_  
_I am                                  Essom (ES-sohm)_  
_You are                             Es_  
_This/That                         Hod/Estod (hohd/estohd)_

_Here is how to have a conversation:_

  
_PERSON A: “I’m sorry that I said bad things about you.”               = “Me penitet quod ab ted males res deicevam.”_  
_PERSON B: “That’s okay. I’m sorry I did bad things to you.”          = “Hod id. Me penitet quod tegei males res facevam.”_  
_PERSON A: “I hope you are okay.”                                                = “Sparo quod duenos es.”_  
_PERSON B: “Yes, I am. Are you okay?”                                          = “Itave, essom. Salhwes?”_  
_PERSON A: “I am also okay.”                                                        = “Quoique duenos essom.”_

  
_OR_

  
_PERSON A: “Please stop what you are doing in my head.”            = “Quaesso, ne facie quod faciens es en meod mentid.”_  
_PERSON B: “Why?”                                                                       = “Quor?”_  
_PERSON A: “It is hurting me.”                                                      = “Me dolhet.”_  
_PERSON B: “No.”                                                                         = “Nem.”_  
_PERSON A: “You are very rude.”                                                  = “Inportunissimos es.”_

 

She had included neat lines of Ancient script off to the right side, which were totally incomprehensible to him. At the bottom, she had drawn a heart and signed her name.

Young grinned at that for a minute before settling down to work on a report for Homeworld Command describing how he, Rush, and Telford had collectively managed to almost lose Destiny to a bunch of aliens. It wasn’t what he would call a salutary experience, though he had never called _anything_ a salutary experience, so maybe it wasn’t what _Rush_ would’ve called that.

Around nineteen hundred hours, when he went to get dinner, he felt Rush wake up— a rush of bleary confusion, disorientation, and distress, like being hit with a wave of unpleasant seawater. He tried to tentatively brush up against Rush’s mind, only to get smacked away again, with a mental sense that Rush had not only slammed the door in his face, but also locked it and immediately crawled under a table to hide. So. That was pretty clear.

When he finally made his way to the infirmary, sometime just before twenty-two hundred hours, it was to find the place almost deserted. Most of the wounded had gone home. Well— to their quarters. TJ was in her office, head bent over her laptop. Young knocked gently on the wall beside the open door.

“Hey,” she said, looking up and smiling tiredly at him.

“Hey. Any more problems after I left?”

She wrinkled her nose. “God. From which one of them.”

That startled a laugh out of Young. “Let me guess: insufficiently appreciative of protein paste.”

“Certainly not Colonel Telford. Can’t you just imagine him living off the stuff? After the apocalypse, he’ll be all that’s left. Just him and the protein paste.”

“Until Rush crawls out of the other bunker,” Young said wryly. “Jesus.”

And that made _TJ_ laugh. “Spy vs. Spy.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t stop Telford from giving you a hard time this morning. For the record, you do not have a _dizzy head_.”

“I wasn’t sure you’d wake up in time to—“ She made a complicated gesture. “You know.”

“Yeah.”

She looked down at the computer she was using. After a second, she asked carefully, “Will we be having you as our guest again tonight?”

Young’s smile faded. He cleared his throat.

“I don’t mind,” she said softly.

“Look, TJ, it’s not—“ he began, and then didn’t know how to continue.

She glanced at him. Her expression was unreadable. “Isn’t it?”

They looked at each other in silence for a moment. Then TJ shook her head and looked down again. “Chloe’s with him right now,” she said. “But she’ll probably be leaving soon.”

“Yeah,” Young said heavily. He hesitated for a moment, but he couldn’t think of anything to say, and after a while he stole out of the room.

* * *

In the back of the infirmary, the lights were out. Chloe and Rush were sitting side-by-side in Rush’s bed, a computer balanced on their laps. The screen was showing some sort of period drama— girls in long dresses with big bows. Rush had recovered his glasses from somewhere, and the colors reflected oddly off the lenses. He was pretending not to pay any attention to Young, but had clocked him pretty much the instant he entered. Young raised his eyebrows at him.

Rush darted a wary look back.

“You’re not paying attention!” Chloe complained. “ _Ne animadvertes!”_

 _“Adverto adtentiom quod meret_ ,” Rush said.

“It’s a very complicated plot! It’s actually all about the rise of capitalism and the production of the human being as commodity. I took a class.”

“ _Ne te teneo,_ ” Rush said.

“You would say that even if you did.” Chloe glanced up. “Hi, Colonel Young.”

“Hey,” Young said, leaning against the wall. “I got your note. Very helpful.”

“ _Quod?_ ” Rush asked her.

“ _Nehil ab ted. Is deicet quod gratia pro meid epistolid aget.”_

“ _Quod epistolis?”_

_“Ei epistolim screivevam.”_

_“Quor?”_

_“Is quor_ _tenet_. That was a play on words,” Chloe announced proudly. “ _He_ knows why, and you don’t need to know why, and he also knows _quor_. That was in the note.”

“I do know _quor_ ,” Young said mildly.

Rush looked infuriated. “ _Opertes_ ,” he accused.

“Yes. That’s all I do. I tell Colonel Young secrets. We’re watching _Pride and Prejudice_ ,” Chloe said to Young. “He probably thinks that was a secret, too.”

He had the sense that she was getting a little bit tired of Rush. Which was fair enough, really; she’d been there for almost five hours, and that was well beyond what was usually accounted a humane Rush maximum.

“ _Pride and Prejudice_ , huh?” Young said. “Is that the one that Hugh Grant’s in?”

“I’m never speaking to you again,” Chloe said.

“ _Ei deice quod suecta horae deruet,”_ Rush said.

“I will not. I’m never speaking to him again. Or you, probably, by the time we’re done with this movie. Anyway, _you_ tell him.”

“ _Ne’m. Ne potissum.”_

“Can he?” Young asked Chloe.

Rush made an exasperated noise. “ _Quor ei_ pulla _epistolim screivevas?_ ” he demanded.

Chloe ignored him. She had paused the movie, and was unplugging her computer. “Kind of. It sort of comes and goes. I think he understands a lot more than he can say, which I guess makes sense? It’s kind of like codebreaking? But—“ She looked uncertainly at Rush, whose response to being ignored was to ignore her in turn.

“Yeah,” Young said. “I got you.”

He watched as she packed her bag up. She leaned in to embrace Rush briefly and say something under her breath to him. He said something irritated-sounding in reply, and she turned, smiling.

“You heading out, kiddo?” Young asked.

“Yes.” She stood on her tiptoes to hug him. “Try not to get in too much trouble.”

“That’s very encouraging,” he said dryly. “I appreciate the conversational models.”

She looked guilty and darted hastily out of the room.

In her absence, the air seemed very quiet. Rush had his arms folded across his chest and was staring fixedly at the wall. Young felt like they were having some kind of unacknowledged contest to see who could last the longest without speaking. But then, abruptly, Rush demanded, “ _Quod epistolis?”_

“Sorry,” Young said. “That wasn’t in the note.” He pulled out said note, and slipped on his reading glasses. “I’ve got a number of suggestions here, most of which are pretty optimistic. Strangely enough, Chloe somehow failed to anticipate that what I’d need to ask you was _Why are you avoiding me_. _Like, in your head._ ”

If Rush understood any of that, it was impossible to tell. He had fixated on the note. “ _Estod epistolis? Dideme. Numc.”_ He clicked his fingers.

Young stared at him incredulously. “Did you just _snap your fingers_ at me? I’m not a European waiter.”

“ _Ne te teneo. Dideme.”_

“I’m pretty sure you’ve got the gist of it. _Neum. Hod?”_ Young waved the note. “Mine.”

Rush climbed unsteadily off the gurney.

“Uh-uh. _Mala idea._ Don’t make me get TJ.”

Rush frowned. “ _Tamarei iam fathlaso_ ,” he said with some asperity. “ _Ridendom sowom audievam.”_

“ _Ne te teneo_ ,” Young said, “but I get the sense that— uh, _cresdo quod_ _tu—“_ he pointed at Rush— _“es_ angry at TJ, who is taking very good care of you, and who stood up for you this morning, when your buddy Telford wanted to give you a function test. Which is a whole other topic. Jesus.”

“ _Scio quod David ne adprobes_ ,” Rush said shortly.

“No, I _don’t_ approve of him. For a lot of very good reasons, which I don’t want to get into right now.” Young sighed and shut his eyes for a second. “Can we just— _not?_ _Ne potissum._ ”

“ _Ne’m_ ,” Rush agreed somewhat forlornly, leaning against the gurney.

“Please just lie down. I don’t know how to say _lie down._ This is exhausting.”

Rush looked away abruptly. “ _Scio_ ,” he said.

“You know, huh?” Young gave up on keeping his distance and crossed the room. “You know a lot more than you’re letting on.”

“ _Ne’m_ ,” Rush said warily.

“Yes, you do,” Young said wearily. “You always do.”

When he got close enough to Rush, Rush made a grab for Chloe’s note. Young held it up out of his reach.

“Nope,” he said, folding the piece of paper and tucking it into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Stop wearing yourself out.”

“ _Nesem.”_

Young crowded Rush gently against the gurney. Rush seemed to find this distracting. At the very least, he gave up on getting ahold of the note, and gazed up at Young with a faintly hypnotized expression. Young was finding the proximity pretty distracting himself. Rush was just _there_ , the barest whisper away from his body, and there were a lot of bones Young had been intending to pick with him— _stop slamming mental doors in my face_ was one, and also, _since when can you short out monitors with your bare hands_ , with a side order of _does it bother you at all that Telford thinks of you as a piece of equipment,_ when he could work up the energy for it— but it was hard to focus on any of those when his overwhelming urge was to press his face against the curve of Rush’s neck.

“ _Quod?_ ” Rush breathed out.

“Nothing,” Young said quietly. “Come on. Sit back down.”

Rush made a faint exasperated sound and shifted himself back to sit on the edge of the gurney. “ _Quod megei dides pro oboedientid?”_ he asked Young pointedly. “ _Recompensis?”_

“Please tell me you did not just describe yourself as _obedient_ ,” Young said with a crooked smile.

“ _Itave_ ,” Rush said. “ _Deices sedere, sedeam. Deices…”_ His breath stuttered, possibly because Young had leaned in to steal his glasses and place them on the side table. “ _Deices…”_

“You can’t even think of one other example, can you?” Young challenged.

“ _Ne weros est,”_ Rush said. But he’d been derailed. He said almost soundlessly, “ _Towos gialia adhuc vesties.”_

 _“_ Hmm?”

Rush slowly lifted his hands to Young’s face, the very tips of his fingers finding the arms of Young’s reading glasses. His palms were cold against Young’s cheeks, but there was something uniquely Rush about that fact, which Young found both impossibly endearing and very hard to resist.

“ _Duena idea_ ,” Young said, his own breath coming short. “Take them off. Not going to need those.”

“ _Ne’m,”_ Rush agreed, and practically flung them onto the table before scrambling back to where Young was. “ _Oboediens_ ,” he said with a hint of a smile. _“Deices removere, removeam_.”

“All right, that’s enough,” Young said with a crooked grin.

“ _Recompensis_ ,” Rush said, faintly imperious, and kissed him.

It was a very satisfying kiss, partly because Young had been waiting for it, and also because Rush kissing or getting kissed always seemed to be a completely different creature from the one who hated to be touched. He was more akin to the Rush who insisted on sleeping with every inch of himself shoved up against Young’s body. There was that same almost feral push to get closer, closer, closer. With a sharp exhale, Rush thrust himself up further into the kiss, getting his hands into Young’s hair at the same time and dragging Young’s head downwards, so that Young was forced to grasp at the sides of Rush’s face just to keep up. But Rush liked that, too; he made a muted sound of pleasure and slid his hands down to Young’s collar so he could use it to yank Young forwards against him.

“Mm,” Young mumbled vaguely. “Yeah, that’s—“

 _“Mala idea_ ,” Rush said breathlessly.

“Feels like… feels like a pretty good idea.”

“ _Ob te. Mala idea ob te. Escros ’som. Im— imbecilis.”_

He was licking into Young’s mouth, hot flickers of his tongue that Young chased, feeling dazed and brainless. Rush had managed to wrap his legs around Young’s waist, and that was— a whole new landscape of closeness, a whole new way for their bodies to fit together, which should have felt a lot, a _lot_ more nakedly sexual than Young had really meant for things to get in the middle of the infirmary, but instead just felt like being _held_ and _cradled_ and _wanted_. Not to say that he wasn’t incredibly turned on, but something in his chest also clenched painfully at the sense of being _welcome_ after having been shut out for so long, and he could feel the first seam of light where Rush’s mind was hinting at the presence of a doorway, and he knew that in a moment he would be able to slip into the lock, and such a profound sense of relief swept over him that he wasn’t thinking about what he was doing when he projected, //Yes— Nick— just let me—//

It was the fastest and most completely that Rush had ever blocked him. The sensation was like running into a steel fence— something not terribly sturdy, but still pretty goddamn brutal. It punched the breath out of his lungs.

“ _Ne’m_ ,” Rush said, sounding panicked, shoving him away. “ _Ne’m, ne’m, n’em.”_ He shuffled backwards on the gurney till he could get his back to the wall, pulling his knees up defensively against his chest.

“Whoa,” Young said, disorientated. “What the—“

“ _Apstinete_ ,” Rush bit out. His voice was shaking. “Neod _facie_ ; _neod_ pulla _facie; quor neod tenes, idiota—”_

“Okay, okay.” Young held his hands up. He tried to make his voice soothing. “I don’t— I don’t know what’s going on. _Ne scio._ Um.” He had to think. He offered tentatively, “ _Salhwes?”_

Rush grabbed an empty Gatorade bottle off of the bedside table and threw it at him.

Young ducked. “Yeah. Pretty obviously not okay.”

“ _Ne’m!_ ” Rush said. He was shivering a little, and trying to hide it, badly.

Young raked an agonized hand through his hair. “Fuck. _Fuck._ I’ve got— a limited repertoire here of— _Me penitet?_ I don’t know what’s wrong. I don’t know why you don’t want me in your head. _En towod mentid— neum. Quor? Dolhet?_ ”

“ _Ita!_ ” Rush said vehemently. “ _—que ne’mque— n’est—“_ His voice cracked slightly. He sounded miserable and angry. “ _Ne explecare potissum. Ne teneas, ne—ego— me ideai dolhet.”_

“ _Ne te teneo,”_ Young said helplessly.

Rush shut his eyes. “ _Scio._ ”

“You hurt, but— in the idea?”

Rush folded his arms over his head and choked out a painful laugh. _“Itave._ ”

“Great. _Hod id._ That’s very helpful. _”_ Young sighed. “Can I— um, _potissum?_ ” He tried stepping forwards, keeping his hands held carefully in front of him. “Or I can—“ He pointed towards the doorway. “Go?”

“No!” Rush said quickly. He shook his head in a jerky motion. “No. _Ne discede. Stae._ ”

“Right,” Young said uncertainly.

“ _Hoc vuenie,_ ” Rush said. There was a note in his voice that wanted to be demanding, but only made it to desperate.

“I don’t—“

Rush made a frustrated gesture towards the gurney. _“_ Hoc. _Hoc_ vuenie. _”_

“Oh.” Young went to him. Rush unfolded from the tight knot he’d curled into and shifted minutely to one side, an unspoken invitation. Young clambered up to sit beside him without speaking. Neither of them looked at each other for a minute.

“I don’t understand,” Young said finally. “What did I do? Why are you so— I don’t know— _scared_ of me?“

“ _Nehil ne facevas_ ,” Rush said tightly. “ _Epnia ob te ne sent. Malaca.”_

“I didn’t understand any of that.”

“ _Scio_ ,” Rush said, and laid his head on Young’s shoulder.

Young brought an arm up around him. “I’m not going to hurt you, you know. _Ego. Tu— ne dolhet._ ”

“ _Scio_ ,” Rush said again.

“I really want to, um— _Welho quod ego— en towod mentid._ I think I could help you if you let me in. _Cresdo quod duenos est. Ego. En towod mentid.”_

Rush looked at him suspiciously. “ _Quor hoiei cresdes?_ ”

“I just do,” Young said evasively. He didn’t think this was a particularly good time to explain how little control Rush actually had over whether Young could see into and touch his mind, or that Young had already taken advantage of that fact without telling him. Guiltily, at some level he was aware that it was probably never going to be a good time for that conversation, but having it in a combination of two languages while Rush was volatile and Young was exhausted seemed like an especially bad plan.

“ _Opertes_ ,” Rush said, frowning.

“Maybe we could try just it a little? You can tell me to stop. _Tu,_ um, _deicet_ _absiste,_ and _ego absiste._ _Absiste_. See. I know that word.”

Rush shook his head vehemently. “ _Ne welho quod wideas_ ,” he said. “ _Si wides, cresdas quod fractos ’som.”_

Young made a frustrated noise. “Fine. Okay. Fine. I mean, _not_ fine, obviously, because it’s fucking— it’s fucking _not fine_. Do you get that? It’s really fucked up. I don’t even _understand_ what’s going on. I’m not going to _hurt_ you. I just— If I fucking blocked you out, you’d— I mean, I _can’t_ even, because it would fuck you up, so maybe think about _that_ for a hot second. But if I fucking _locked the door_ , which is what you’re _doing_ , by the way, that’s what it _feels_ like, you’d throw a goddamn tantrum. You’d hate it. I mean, you’d probably just crawl through a window, or climb down the chimney or something. But I’m just fucking—“ he gestured helplessly— “stuck out in the cold here, and it kind of makes me wonder if you’re hiding something from me, which— you definitely are, but something _important_ , I mean, and—“

“ _Ne’m_ ,” Rush said emphatically again.

Young sighed. “Fine. Can I— am I allowed to do this, then?” He leaned over and kissed Rush, a little more forcefully than he’d intended, because he was still frustrated, even though he really wanted to kiss him. He was— maybe trying not to let himself examine the motive for that too much; he didn’t _have_ any motive, he told himself; he just—

Rush relaxed. “ _Itave_ ,” he said. And when he said yes, he meant _really_ yes, because he opened his mouth under Young’s and turned the kiss hotter, wetter, slightly pushy in the way that Young was coming to associate with him.

In a minute he had managed to straddle Young, pushing him flat against the gurney and was proceeding to combine the hitherto separate states of kissing Young and being in bed with Young by sucking on Young’s lower lip while simultaneously attempting to achieve a level of physical closeness that was more like an attempt to occupy Young’s molecular space. Young hadn’t imagined that kissing Rush while lying down would be so different from kissing Rush while standing, but it _really_ was; there was a lot more of getting the whole nervous, squirming weight of Rush pressed against him, so that he could touch everywhere he wanted, and feeling the delicious full-body twitch every time he scraped Rush’s lower lip with his teeth. He hiked Rush’s shirt up under his arms to run both hands down his bare back, which made Rush arch against him in a vaguely cat-like manner. 

“Don’t think—“ Young said, muffled, “I’m giving up on the other—

Rush covered his mouth with a hand and said breathlessly, “ _Denovod. Estod. Estod adprobo._ ”

“You _approve_ of that, do you?” Young said, amused, when Rush had deigned to let him speak.

Rush nodded haughtily, so Young skimmed hands down his back again, and Rush shut his eyes and made a soft pleased noise, lying forward against him, kissing him in an slower, absent, dreamy way, which sort of took things down a level. But Young didn’t really mind. He kept petting Rush in long, even strokes, vaguely amazed by Rush’s ordinary anatomy: the shallow curve of his back, and the notches of his spine, perfect for analyzing unseen with the tips of his fingers; his too-apparent ribs, and the newly uncovered expanse of smooth chilly skin.

“Nick,” he murmured. “You’ve got to thermoregulate better.”

“Fuck you,” Rush said against his mouth.

Young laughed quietly. “Of course that’s the first English—“

“ _Tace_ ,” Rush said. _“_ Tu _caledos es, egitur— e—egitur ne— “_ He abandoned his sentence and dropped his head to Young’s neck, planting a hazy series of kisses there that formed no particular pattern, and in fact barely conformed to the definition of a kiss, since it really felt more like he was setting out to conquer the territory with his lips and tongue.

So they weren’t even actually kissing when Rush’s mind came open. Young wanted to believe this meant he hadn’t been consciously angling for it, but he had been aware of the possibility when he’d kissed Rush. He could _help_ Rush like this, he thought a little guiltily. And he wasn’t— _intentionally_ doing anything; Rush did this on his own, even if he wasn’t aware of it, and Young just happened to be there to take advantage. It was more of an accident than anything else.

With a sense of pieces fitting together, of being the right size and the right shape and just _right_ for this one place, as he was for nowhere else, maybe in the entire world, he held his breath as the door slid open, and then he was in Rush’s head.

It was—

 _Fractos_ , Rush had said, and Young hadn’t really known what he was referring to.

This was what he’d been referring to. This was what he’d been hiding. This was what he had not wanted Young to see. Himself.

 _Fractos_. Broken.

Every part of him had been fractured, ripped into pieces, thread torn from carefully interlocking thread and sometimes pulled till whole sections came unravelled. Young could still sort of see hints of the rich, warm, charming, anxious pattern that was supposed to be there, but that was because Rush was expending all of his energy to hold the pieces in place, to not let them fall apart again where the edges were severed. It was obvious where he’d spent hours trying to line them up, sometimes not quite getting them into the right positions, sometimes _almost_ encouraging the edges to knot, but even within these scraps of fabric there were stretched-thin or punched-through places. _Fuck_ , Young thought, agonized. _You idiot. You can’t_ do _this by yourself._ But the immediate response of all the particle-threads was defensiveness. They _had_ done this before. Fuck him. Where had he been when David— or when the Nakai— in the water— _You don’t have to do this by yourself_ , he amended. _Please. Please let me help._ They were a little reluctant, but they also wanted his attention. _What if I just paid attention to you for a while?_ he suggested. They agreed. So he tried tentatively laying his hands on them. They hummed with a strange and not unpleasant cat’s-purr kind of vibration. He thought at them in an abstract way about how they were supposed to be, about who Rush was, how the arrangement of him was supposed to go, until they seemed to get the idea of it. There was a surprising amount of ship-stuff mixed in with the threads, cables and wires that had gotten confused about where they belonged, and Young managed to weed most of those out. _And stay out_ , he told them severely. Meanwhile the Rush-threads, thrilled by Young’s attention, had started to grow: ordering themselves according to the design he’d suggested, reweaving old connections, like a time-lapse of vines on a garden wall. It made Young feel slightly giddy with success, and he fed that giddiness back into what he was doing, his own euphoria incubating further growth. The threads liked that he was happy. Stay, they urged him. Stay. _I am_ , he said. _But in the outside world._ They huffed at that, but accepted it as an adequate compromise.

So Young focused back on his own physical body. He was still running his hands slowly down Rush’s back, and Rush was blinking at him, drowsy and confused.

“ _Quod facevas?”_ Rush mumbled, letting his head rest against Young’s shoulder. “ _Id adprobo. Denovod.”_

 _“Duenos est?”_ Young asked, smiling a little, combing a hand through Rush’s hair.

“Mm.”

“Good.”

Rush projected a wave of lazy contentment at him. It was the first thing he’d projected— beyond _Fuck you_ — since getting out of the chair, and Young felt his own relief like a physical blow. He hurled himself towards alignment with Rush and breathed out as they came into apposition. For the first time since the virus, he could track the tangled mess of Rush’s feelings: vestiges of arousal and panic, a low-level headache, an overwhelming desire not to move from Young’s arms; running currents of exhaustion and frustration and worry. Underneath it all was simply the sensation of _Rushness_ that could never be defined or pinned-down, something math-y, irritable, Ancient, dense, meteoric, and fragile that was so achingly familiar it made Young’s teeth hurt.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “For letting me back in. _Ne— dolhet idea?_ ”

Rush shrugged and said indistinctly, “ _Ne’m._   _Numc me dehibes._ You owe me. _Recompensis._ ”

“Oh, I _owe_ you, do I?”

“Yes. _Recompensis.”_

“I think you owe _me_. For putting up with you.”

“ _Forte an sei wis_ ,” Rush murmured, sounding unhappy.

“Hey. No. Come on. Turn that frown upside down.” He poked Rush’s shoulder. “I was thinking along the lines of, maybe you could just be nice to me. For— like— a week. No throwing things at me.”

“Non-realistic.”

“Yeah, probably.” Young tugged Rush’s shirt down and smoothed it out over his back. “We can work out the details tomorrow. Go to sleep.”

“ _Ne’m.”_

“Yes. What happened to obedience?”

 _“Strategema._ ”

“That’s what I figured. How about this: if you go to sleep, I’ll show you Chloe’s note tomorrow. _Dormie_ , and tomorrow— _epistolis_. _Recompensis?_ ”

Rush made an unconvinced sound.

“It’s pretty much just a list of Ancient vocab that she made for me. She’s a sweet kid. She had a rough time while you were out, so you need to be nice to her.”

“Nakai,” Rush said quietly. “ _Multuns Nakai interfacievad_.”

“The Nakai were part of it. I was an idiot, too. I was pretty angry at Telford about what he did to you. And—“

_“I’m trying to help you,” David said in a low voice. And— he was really very close now. And he rested a hand on Rush’s shoulder and very carefully very coaxingly he shifted it till he was cupping the back of Rush’s neck, heavy and intimate and so so warm and a little bit restraining but then that was David all over wasn’t it? Wasn’t it. And— Young wanted to climb out of his skin but– this was not Young’s body this was not Young’s skin so what right did he have to— but Rush couldn’t move because— the last time David had touched him like this—_

_“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” Telford says._

_He does not— he does not like the water, and this is not water, this is not water, but it is cold like water, and it is covering him,and soon it will be in his mouth and his lungs, and he has to move, and he cannot move, and the water (not water not water) is crawling over his skin, and his fast shallow breathing rips at his body and it is going to tear his chest apart—_

_Telford looms over him and puts his hands on Rush’s shoulders, forcing him flat against the floor of the pool. Rush wants to fight, but his heart his barely beating. He has nothing to fight with. Everything about him has gone slow. The world pulses_ _around him in long strange sinusoidal moments, ebbing and flowing, coming and going, and he understands that he is not getting enough oxygen to his brain, that the gel is acting as a paralytic agent, and that he is going to die here. Here. In the water._

Fuck, Young thought and got a good grasp on Rush’s mind and _yanked—_

 _and Rush is gasping and dripping all over the porch of_  
_the cabin in Taos and Young quickly tows him inside._  
_Jesus! You’re going to catch your death out there. Come_  
_on in. You know you don’t have to wait for an invitation._  
_Rush is looking a little bit shellshocked and Young says_  
_Well you didn’t think I was going to leave you on the_  
_porch in the middle of a rainstorm. Rush makes a con-_  
_fused gesture, and Young says, It’s dry in here and I’ve_  
_got plenty of space. It doesn’t bother me to have you_  
_around. Rush shrugs, though he’s still looking vaguely_  
_confused, and trails into the cabin, already stripping off_  
_his wet shirt. Young says, Go get dry. I’ll pour you_  
_a drink or something. You ever have a Dark and Stormy?_  
_Perfect for you. Rush rolls his eyes and wanders off to—_

  
_For what it’s worth I’m sorry David_  
_said I’m sorry this is how it’s got to be don’t_  
_fight this I promise that later you’re going_  
_to understand_

  
— _I didn’t even know I still had that shirt, Young says,_  
_eyeing Rush with amusement. Rush is wearing a UW_  
_Cowboys t-shirt, slightly faded, with a bucking bronco_  
_on the front. He looks disgruntled about it. He makes_  
_a gesture that seems to be intended to communicate_  
_something about the stupidity of rodeos, or maybe cow-_  
_boys in general, or possibly the entire West. Yeah, okay,_  
_Young says, whatever, buckaroo. Rush gives him a_  
_murderous look. Young shoves a glass at him. Drink_  
_your damn drink and enjoy your dry t-shirt. There’s a_  
_record player over in the music room now by the way,_  
_like I know what the fuck to do with a record, so I’m_  
_assuming that’s for you. Feel free to stick something_  
_on. There seem to be an awful lot of bad Seventies_  
_albums in the cabinet underneath it, so your reputation_  
_as a snob is pretty much—_

“Sorry,” Young said. “That was my fault.”

Rush had tensed against him as the flashback hit him. “Yes!” he snapped. “Your fault! _Et— mala idea est. Ne teneo quod facies, hod— somnium._ Dream. _Ne teneo quomodo hod facies._ ”

“Sorry; it’s just— an instinct. I don’t really mean to do it. I just— I guess I always just want you to think about something nice. Instead of—“ He shrugged. “What it is you think about.”

In response, Rush shifted so that he was lying beside Young, and tucked his face into his neck. He got ahold of Young’s arm and maneuvered it over him. “ _Mala idea,”_ he said again, his voice muffled. “Me. In your mind _._ I will hurt you. _”_

“But you don’t, ever,” Young said. “In that dream.”

“No,” Rush said softly.

“ _Duenos somnium?”_ Young said, somewhat tentatively. He immediately wished he hadn’t asked the question. It felt like he was exposing something that couldn’t bear to be exposed. “Never mind, that was a stupid—“

“Yes,” Rush whispered. He turned his face towards the pillow.

Young stared at the ceiling. “Okay,” he said soundlessly, flattening his palm against Rush’s back. “Okay.”

* * *

 _“Thank you,”_ _Young says when Rush shows up at the door this time._

_Rush is still wearing the oversized Cowboys t-shirt from earlier, when he… when Rush was… It gets confusing, sometimes. It’s started to get confusing. It’s better just to not think about it too much. Rush doesn’t seem to be bothered by it, anyway; he just gives Young a smug, expectant look, like he finds it totally reasonable that Young should be thanking him._

_Young rolls his eyes. “No, not— I mean, yes, okay, I_ guess _thank you for_ deigning _to show up, and amazingly not be completely soaking wet this time—“ Rush looks like he’s been in a fight, instead, sort of out-of-breath and with a very faint bruise on his cheekbone, and are his— “Wait, are your hands fucking zip-tied?”_

_Rush shrugs and Young rolls his eyes again. “Come on, I’ll cut you loose in the kitchen.”_

_So he uses a pair of gardening shears to cut the zip-tie off Rush’s hands. Rush is awfully patient considering that he’s obviously been struggling like hell against the zip tie, given the bruises already starting to show on his wrists._

_“You’re a mess,” Young says, exasperated. “Don’t try and get out of these things unless you’ve already got a plan. You’re just going to hurt yourself, which is the opposite of a strategic move.”_

_Shrug._

_“Yeah, well,_ I _care.”_

_He’s ended up holding Rush’s hands in his own, just sort of standing there in the middle of the kitchen, and Rush gives him an unreadable look._

_“It’s a lot of work, you know,” Young says softly. “Caring about you. You absolute disaster.”_

_Rush manages a painful, humorless half-smile and pulls away, hugging his arms across his chest._

_“I didn’t say I wasn’t up for it,” Young says. “I let a bunch of fucking Jam records into my house for you. I’m not giving up on you now. You’re stuck with me.”_

_The visible tension in Rush’s body lessens slightly._

_“Plus a bunch of shit in German that I don’t even understand. I_ really _hope that having your brain means I’m going to_ get _classical music, because otherwise, I kind of foresee you yelling at me a lot. I mean, I assume that at some point you might start talking again.”_

_Rush makes a complicated gesture— waving his hand from side-to-side with a shrug— that seems optimistic._

_Young muses, “Maybe I should just do everything that you might yell at me about now.”_

_Rush smacks him on the arm._

_“Or maybe not. You know, you’re pretty violent for a guy who plays the piano.”_

_Rush glares at him._

_“Not that I’m making any judgments about the piano, and its manliness as an instrument. Oh—” Young says, hastily changing the subject before he gets smacked again. “Right. Thank you. That was— that was what you were saying. The B flats.”_

_Abruptly Rush hunches his shoulders and looks uncomfortable, staring at the floor. He shrugs minutely._

_“I’m not— I mean—“ Young fidgets. “You’re welcome,” he says finally. “Sorry for breaking the no-human-emotion rule. Although I guess technically you broke it first.”_

_Rush looks indignant. He shakes his head vehemently and points at Young, accusing._

_“Whatever. Go play Chopsticks, why don’t you.”_

_Rush casts his eyes to the ceiling and stalks out of the room. A moment later, Young hears him start to play an elaborately ornamented version of Chopsticks that segues into a set of complicated variations. Young wanders into the music room, because they have a music room now, because it’s not good for the piano to be so close to the fireplace, and leans against the doorframe, watching. Rush makes it a couple minutes into his showing-off before his fingers falter and he pulls back._

_There’s a short silence._

_Young says quietly, “You didn’t really have to do that. Was it better?”_

_Without looking at him, Rush reaches out and touches a tentative G4._

_“Good. I’m glad.”_

_B4. C5._

_“Is that my next puzzle?”_

_Rush shrugs. G4._

_“Does that mean you’re leaving?”_

_Rush turns to look at him, indecisive and anxious. He makes a helpless gesture._

_“I know you think it’s not good for you to be here. You gotta do what you gotta do, I guess. But— you know– you’re welcome to stay.”_

_A very quiet F5. Rush stands and crosses the room to Young, and looks at him in a way that Young almost can’t stand for a minute. It’s just so— full of things. All the things Rush can’t say, now or maybe ever. Rush reaches up and touches Young’s cheek. Then he’s turning to go._

_Young trails him out onto the porch. The maelstrom outside seems like it’s lessened slightly; someone’s tried to put it in some kind of order, at least, so that Atlantis isn’t half-overrun with industrial Glasgow and the Nakai aren’t in San Francisco and Telford’s sort of confined to his own space, and all of these things are actually recognizable as themselves, which they weren’t, really, earlier. Still, it’s a lot of noise, and every so often something seems to just sort of_ happen _, more-or-less like a bomb going off, except it’s a spike of terror where millions of people are dying or a radio is going through a window or someone is drowning or water just floods everywhere, although everything seems to be covered with a couple of inches of water_ anyways _, even the parts that should be dry._

_“Be careful,” Young says, his throat tight. “Please be careful.”_

_Rush just rolls his eyes and steps delicately off the porch into the water, wading off towards the horizon until he disappears._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Adverto adtentiom quod meret_ = I'm paying it the attention it deserves.  
>  _Nehil ab ted. Is deicet quod gratia pro meid epistolid aget._ Nothing about you. He's saying thanks for my letter.  
>  _Quod epistolis?_ What letter?  
>  _Ei epistolim screivevam._ I wrote him a letter.  
>  _Ei deice quod suecta horae deruet._ Tell him it's six hours long.  
>  _Quor ei pulla epistolim screivevam?_ Why did you write him a fucking letter?  
>  _Estod epistolis? Dideme. Numc._ Is that the letter? Give it to me. Now.  
>  _Tamarei iam fathlaso. Ridendom sowom audievam._ You already talked to Tamara. I heard her laughing.  
>  _Scio quod David ne adprobes._ I know you don't like/approve of David.  
>  _Quod me dides pro oboedientid? Recompensis?_ What do I get for obeying? A reward?  
>  _Deices sedere, sedeam. Deices…_ You say sit, I sit. You say...  
>  _Ne weros est. Towos gialia adhuc vesties._ Not true. You're still wearing your glasses.  
>  _Oboediens. Deices removere, removeam._ Obedience. You say remove, I remove.  
>  _Ob te. Mala idea ob te. Escros ’som. Im— imbecilis._ For you. Bad idea for you. I'm shameful. Weak.  
>  _Apstinete. Neod facie; neod pulla facie; quor neod tenes, idiota—_ Keep out. Don't do that; don't fucking do that; why don't you get it, idiot—  
>  _Itaque ne'mque— n'est— Ne explecare potissum. Ne teneas, ne—ego— me ideai dolhet._ Yes and no— it's not— I can't explain. You won't understand, I— it's not— my thoughts hurt.  
>  _Nehil ne facevas. Epnia ob te ne sent. Malaca._ You didn't do anything. Not everything is about you. Asshole.  
>  _Quor hoiei credes?_ Why do you think that?  
>  _Opertes._ Secrets.  
>  _Ne welho quod wideas. Si wides, credas quod fractos ’som._ I don't want you to see. If you see, you'll think I'm broken.  
>  _Denovod. Estod. Estod adprobo._ Again. That. I like that.  
>  _Tace. Tu caledos es, egitur— egitur ne—"_ Shut up. You're warm, so I don't—  
>  _Quod facevas? Id adprobo. Denovod._ What did you do? I like it. Again.  
>  _Numc me dehibes._ Now you owe me.  
>  _Forte an sei wis._ Probably.  
>  _Multuns Nakai interfacievad_ She killed a lot of Nakai.  
>  _Ne teneo quod facies, hod— somnium... Ne teneo quomodo hod facies._ I don't understand what you're doing, this— dream... I don't understand how you're doing it.


	37. Careful, Not Too Bright

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Relevant translations are in the endnote.

Matt knows that Dr. Rush doesn’t like him. He’s pretty sure that it’s because he really isn’t a very bright guy. He knows that about himself. He tries really hard to be bright; right after he got out of Basic, he enrolled in one of those speed-reading courses that get advertised in the backs of magazines, because he thought maybe that was the solution. He’s never been a quick reader. He’s never been a quick anything. In the Air Force, that never mattered so much, because the most important thing is to be good at your job, and it’s not about _smart_ so much as it is about _careful._ Matt’s really careful. A CO wrote that about him once, in an evaluation. Matt Scott: he’s a careful guy.

The speed-reading course didn’t make him a better reader, and he didn’t manage to make it through _The Guns of August_ or _The Art of War_ , which were the two books that his first CO recommended. He kept getting recommendations from people, and he made a list of all the books he ought to read for self-improvement, but after a while he got used to the idea that all he was ever going to be was careful.

But then he met Chloe, who’d gone to Harvard, so she’d already started off awfully smart, and she could talk about things like neoliberalism and the rise of cosmopolitan culture, which he he had never even heard of, and she’d read all these books he hadn’t read, and it wasn’t just that she’d read them, but that she _loved_ them, and then he felt like he’d wasted his life, because he wanted to be able to understand the things she loved. And she liked music he’d never heard of, by people from Mexico and France and Australia, and she could play the flute, even though there weren’t any flutes on the Destiny, so she said that she could “play the hypothetical flute, I guess.”

And then terrible things happened to her, and she got even _smarter_ , too smart for anybody on the Destiny, maybe, except for Eli and Dr. Rush. In some ways that was easier, because it wasn’t just Matt who was stupid. Everybody was stupid now, around her. And she didn’t want to talk about arthouse movies with Wray anymore, or hang out with TJ, or compare music festival experiences with Dr. Park. But at the same time Matt had waited patiently for her to break up with him, once she found out the math stuff wasn’t going away, because he figured that next to her he was probably— like— an insect. Or a dog.

They had a fight about it and Matt pretty much said that she was an idiot if she wanted to settle for him, and Chloe said that she thought his whole problem was that she wasn’t an idiot, and Matt said that his problem wasn’t that she wasn’t an idiot but that he was an idiot compared to her, and Chloe said that he wasn’t an idiot, just slow, but that now everyone was slower than her, and that she’d rather be with some who got to the right places eventually than with someone who got to the wrong places fast. She said that Matt was a good person who thought hard about important things, and that she used to not think people like him existed, that they were a kind of American fantasy. You thought I was a fantasy? Matt asked, confused. Chloe said that was sort of what she meant, and that maybe he should think about the fact that she wasn’t anyone’s fantasy: a weird math genius who almost turned into a monster once and couldn’t sleep and had lots of panic attacks. That was before the Nakai invasion, so she hadn’t said And also who’s killed lots of people, but Matt gets the sense that she would probably add that now. He said, genuinely bewildered, But you’re, like, the most amazing person I’ve ever met, and she burst into tears, and he didn’t understand why.

So he knows that Chloe doesn’t mind about how not-smart he is, but he’s pretty sure that Dr. Rush does mind. He kind of thinks that Dr. Rush would like him to disappear, so that eventually when they get back to Earth he could set Chloe up with a nice math genius who isn’t part of the military-industrial complex, which Dr. Rush doesn’t like, even though Matt once asked Chloe how Dr. Rush wasn’t part of the military-industrial complex, if he worked for the Stargate program, and Chloe had looked very amused and said not to bring that up to Dr. Rush.

But Colonel Young had asked Dr. Rush to help make Matt a ring for Chloe, which was really nice, and which he definitely didn’t have to do, and Matt couldn’t exactly say, No, thanks.

So now he’s stuck in the Destiny machine shop with Dr. Rush and Brody, and also with Greer, who is kind of Dr. Rush’s bodyguard these days? Or maybe his job is to make sure that Dr. Rush doesn’t fall down, because ever since the Nakai computer virus, Dr. Rush has been a little strange. He’s cold _all the time_ , like _really cold_ , and tired, and he has trouble speaking English. Chloe says the Destiny’s computer reset his brain to Ancient, and he has to work hard to remember English, and that’s why he’s mostly speaking in these short, choppy sentences that turn into Ancient at the end.

“Gold. Should look like _gold_ ,” Dr. Rush says scathingly of the piece of metal Brody holds up for inspection. “Not— _ne scio quod celos ellod._ ”

“English, Doc,” Greer says wearily. “Speak _English_.”

“Only one who doesn’t speak Ancient,” Dr. Rush says irritably. “You. _”_

Matt speaks a little Ancient, but not a ton. He has a hard time understanding noun declensions, even though Chloe tries to help him all the time. “ _Ego_ _ne fathlor Alteriumom,”_ he says.

“Contradiction,” Dr. Rush snaps at him. “Make sense.”

Brody sighs and stares at the metal. “It’s not going to look like gold if it’s made out of stripped copper. If you want to maybe suggest something less potentially explosive than adding more naquada—“

“Too bright,” Dr. Rush says. “Wrong luster.”

“I think it looks pretty good,” Matt says, trying to be encouraging. “I mean, especially for copper. You made it look really… good.”

Dr. Rush ignores him. “Try zinc.”

“ _Malom edad si brangit_ ,” Brody says.

“Come on,” Greer says. “Seriously. Colonel Young really wants him to practice his English.”

Dr. Rush rolls his eyes. “Learn Ancient. Lazy.”

“I can’t tell if you’re talking about me or him, but either way, yeah, it’s really lazy of us not to have learned a language that literally no one in the universe speaks while we were busy saving your ass from the Lucian Alliance and air bugs and your own damn self.”

“ _I_ speak,” Dr. Rush says.

“Well, that’s set me straight,” Greer says, turning his eyes up to the ceiling. “I’ve changed my mind. We’re all going to learn it.”

“Yes. Whole ship. Speak Ancient. More sense.”

With that issue settled, Dr. Rush turns back to Brody, who’s doing something that Matt guesses has to do with zinc? He doesn’t really know. He’s not even sure he knows what zinc is, really, except that they put it in nickels and batteries.

“ _Quomodo conatom invuenire instruomentum entractandi Nakai it?”_ Dr. Rush asks Brody under his breath, pretending to inspect the melting metal. “ _Colonel Young nehil me pulla ne deicet.”_

Matt doesn’t understand all of that, but he knows that Dr. Rush definitely isn’t asking about metal. He’s asking about the Nakai tracking device. The one that the science team’s looking for. The one that Dr. Rush is _not_ looking for, because he’s on medical leave, and he’s not supposed to be doing any work. The one that Dr. Rush probably isn’t even supposed to be _asking_ about.

“ _Nehil ne envevuenamos,_ ” Brody says, stealing a glance at Greer.

Greer narrows his eyes, like he knows that Brody and Rush are up to _something._

Matt… should probably say something. But it doesn’t seem like a big deal. Just talking about something isn’t going to hurt Dr. Rush. And the thing is that Matt really wants Dr. Rush to like him, or at least to not want him to disappear. Dr. Rush is really important to Chloe. If she says yes when Matt asks her to marry him, he’s pretty sure that she’ll ask Dr. Rush to give her away, since her dad is dead, and now Dr. Rush is kind of like her dad. So it would be nice if Matt was a hundred percent certain that Dr. Rush was going to get up to the front of that aisle and actually be willing to give her to Matt. Not that Chloe is a piece of property. It’s all just symbolic. But it would mess up the wedding, and Chloe would be _really_ mad.

Brody says, “ _Credo quod id envueniamos en esotericom skafi, quia nauim entractractiand de ex de ad nauim vuenevamos, et sciomos quod en nauid nemquam ne adripevand.”_

 _“Adripevand_ ,” Dr. Rush says quietly. “ _Tostom. Pertostom._ ”

“Doc,” Greer says warningly. Something about his eyes looks kind of worried, and Matt’s glad he isn’t the only one who feel conflicted about what’s going on.

“Fuck off,” Dr. Rush says wearily, which at least is English.

“You know, you don’t have to be here,” Greer says. “You could go back home and rest.”

Back home for Dr. Rush, of course, is Colonel Young’s quarters. Matt knows that, and he knows that Greer knows that, and he’s pretty sure that Chloe knows it, too, but none of them have ever talked to each other about it. Matt’s not really sure that he’d know what to say. He’s not really— He doesn’t– The Bible is really important to him. Not the way it’s important to some of the guys he knew in Basic, who tried to get him involved in Christian campouts and Promise Keepers and that kind of thing. He just thinks there’s got to be more to the world than just the stuff around him, even stargates and aliens and other really out-there stuff. More to the world than what someone like Matt can ever understand, or even Chloe, maybe. There’s something else, something he can _almost_ see sometimes, can _almost_ get ahold of, like trying to see the stars when you’re going faster than light, or the opposite of that, and you need a special kind of language for talking about that something else. And that’s the Bible, for him. It always has been. But it’s really hard to figure out how to fit together the Bible with Dr. Rush and Colonel Young, who sleep in the same bed, and do other stuff, probably, and look at each other sometimes in a way that makes Matt feel like he’s about six years old and still awestruck by staring up at the night sky, seeing the whole spread of the Milky Way— not like it’s good or bad or even _love_ or _not-love_ so much as those words don’t apply and it’s just… big. So he figures maybe he should keep his mouth shut about it, until he knows what it’s like to be part of something that big.

“Rest,” Dr. Rush says dismissively to Greer. “Extremely boring. From Colonel Young, constant nagging. ‘Sleep, eat.’ ‘Sleep, eat.’ ‘Tell how to say word in Ancient.’”

Colonel Young is making a vocabulary list. Chloe said.

“Fine. Well, while you’re here, you’re gonna speak English.”

“ _Fine_ ,” Dr. Rush says dangerously. He turns to Matt with an air of aggression. “It is not _obvious_ to you that Chloe should go to graduate school?”

“Uh,” Matt says, alarmed. He’s pretty sure his ears are turning red, which they have a tendency to do when he gets put on the spot. “I guess? But she can’t right now?”

“Why not?” Dr. Rush demands.

“Because… we’re not on Earth?”

“Oh.” Dr. Rush waves his hand, like this is not a big deal. “When you get back to Earth, _then_ you remember that she is not a housewife. Very talented. Not allowed to make her move to some fucking military installation. Middle of nowhere. Unacceptable.”

A weird silence fills the room.

“When  _you_ get back?” Brody asks tentatively.

Dr. Rush makes a frustrated sound. “First I must speak English, now— nitpicking.”

Which doesn’t make any sense, because the words for _you_ and _we_ are really different in Ancient _and_ English. Even Matt knows that.

“Maybe you could,” Matt says, trying to ease the weirdness, “write her a letter of recommendation? If she wants to go? That might really encourage her.”

“Obviously,” Dr. Rush says. “Obviously I’ll write her a letter.”

He isn’t looking at any of them.

But still, Matt feels a little bit better. Maybe it _was_ just a slip of the tongue. After all, Dr. Rush is having a hard time right now. He’s started shivering, even though the room is really hot; he leans in and tries to warm his hands around the burner where Brody’s heating the metal. He looks tired.

Brody draws the mixture out into a thin wire, curls it, and lays it aside to cool. Matt leans in to try to get a look at the color.

“I think it looks really good!” he says. “I like that you can kind of see all three colors in there. I think she’ll like that. What’s that called? When you mix the things together to make one thing?”

“An alloy,” Brody says.

“An alloy,” Matt repeats. “Like— a triple alloy. I like it.”

“Not too bright,” Dr. Rush says approvingly. “And alloy is strong. Three elements better than one alone.”

“Hopefully that’s not going to be, like, relevant,” Brody says. “Since it’s a ring, not a weapon. Although around here you never know."

Matt stares at the ring-to-be. He feels a little overwhelmed. Until now his proposal hasn’t really been a physical _thing_. Now it feels real: something that he’s going to hand to Chloe for her to put on her finger.

He looks at Rush and swallows. “Any tips on— you know— from here on out?” he ventures.

Dr. Rush gives him an incredulous look. “She knows what she wants, I suppose,” he says. “Heart is profoundly stupidest organ, but—“ he makes an aggravated gesture— “also strongest. Can’t be helped. Human condition.”

That answer sounds like it’s not very complimentary to Matt, a suspicion that is only confirmed when Greer smacks Rush on the arm and says, “Come on, man. Don’t be a dick.”

Dr. Rush scowls. “True. Not my fault if rude. Tell human heart it’s rude.”

“Maybe the heart knows something you don’t,” Greer says. “Ever thought of that?”

“Impossible. I know everything.”

“I think—“ Matt says hesitantly. “I think she likes that it doesn’t really make sense? Or not that it doesn’t make sense, but that the sense it makes isn’t necessarily math-sense. If you— if you know what I mean. That there are things she can’t figure out just by solving an equation. Or if she could, it would take her a really long time. I guess if she could solve the equation fast, she’d probably just do that. But she can’t, so—“ he summons a smile— “instead she might spend the rest of her life with me. Maybe. I hope.”

Dr. Rush’s face does something complicated for a second. He almost looks like he’s angry, but in a really sad way, and then he tries to make the whole expression go away, like he’s hoping that maybe nobody saw it. “Big responsibility,” he says quietly. “Being life’s work. Don’t fuck it up.”

“I’m trying not to,” Matt says.

He feels weirdly like he just got some kind of blessing, even though it didn’t really sound that way. It seems like the perfect moment to say something about how Dr. Rush’ll be in the wedding, if there is a wedding, if Chloe says yes, but first of all Matt doesn’t want to jinx the whole thing, and second of all it seems really obvious, like how Greer is going to be his best man. He doesn’t know what to say that won’t come out sounding stupid, and Dr. Rush already thinks he’s stupid, and Matt doesn’t want to add to that.

So he just says again, lamely, “I’m trying.”

But for some reason that seems to be the right thing to say. There’s a flash of that buried sad-angry expression, and Dr. Rush nods abruptly. “Fine,” he says. _“Acceptabilis est._ ”

He straightens and marches towards the door, except really he limps towards the door, because he’s never been able to get rid of his limp. “Greer,” he says impatiently, since Greer hasn’t instantly fallen in line behind him.

Greer rolls his eyes and makes a face at Matt, like, _You see what I gotta deal with?_ But he trails Rush out of the room.

“Okay,” Brody says, resigned. “Right. As usual, I get stuck with clean-up duty.”

“I can help,” Matt says hurriedly. “I really appreciate this. I thought I was going to have to use, like, a piece of wire or something.”

“Yeah, no way was Rush going to let that happen,” Brody says. “In fact, we probably should have pretended we couldn’t make anything out of copper. By next week we’d probably have _coincidentally_ discovered the planet of infinite gold reserves. Or else he’d have pried the fillings out of Volker’s teeth, I guess. He’s going to be in the wedding, right? Because I would pay to see that.”

And again, Matt doesn’t want to jinx the whole thing, so instead he says, “You guys are always really surprised when he does normal person things.”

“Because he’s not a normal person.”

“But he is a _person_. He’s been to weddings. He was married.”

Brody looks uncomfortable. “Yeah, I guess. It’s kind of hard to imagine.”

Matt doesn’t have a hard time imagining it. He thinks that he would’ve, a while back. But he’s had to think a lot about what being married to Chloe will be like. Chloe’s not a normal person. She told him that herself. She said, You know I’m never going to be a normal person? She said, Maybe it doesn’t matter to you now, but it might if we ever go back to Earth. Matt thought carefully about it. He knows that getting married to Chloe means he’s not going to have the kind of life he used to picture for himself. She’s not going to be an Air Force wife. They’re not going to live on a base or in the suburbs and have neighborhood pool parties and backyard barbecues. Chloe doesn’t know if she wants kids. She needs a lot of help from him, sometimes, because it’s harder for her to be a person than it is for most people to be people, because of the things that have happened to her and because of the things that are still happening to her. It’s kind of like Matt had built a house in his head that he thought of as the future, and Chloe came along and demolished it. Now he’s building a new house that looks different from the old one. But he thinks that it’s a bigger house.

And there are some things in the house that are pretty much the same. Chloe wants to have a wedding. She wants to wear a white dress. She wants to be a bride. Matt can picture her doing that. He can picture Dr. Rush at their wedding, dancing with Chloe. It doesn’t even strike him as very strange. Just a picture of two people, dancing.

He stares down at the circle of the ring on the table. The real, physical future. He starts to reach out, but—

“Look, don’t touch,” Brody says, stopping him. “Give it a minute. It’s not ready yet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _ne scio quod celos ellod._ I don't know what color that is.  
>  _Ego ne fathlor Alteriumom_ I don't speak Ancient.  
>  _Malom edad si brangit._ It would be bad if it broke.  
>  _Quomodo conatom invuenire instruomentum entractandi Nakai it? Colonel Young nehil me pulla ne deicet._ How is the search for the Nakai tracking device going? Colonel Young doesn't fucking tell me anything.  
>  _Nehil ne envevuenamos._ We haven't found anything.  
>  _Credo quod id envueniamos en esotericom skafi, quia nauim entractractiand de ex de ad nauim vuenevamos, et sciomos quod en nauid nemquam ne adripevand._ I think we're going to find it on the outside of the hull, because they've been tracking the ship since before we came on board, and we know that they never got on board.  
>  _Adripevand. Tostom. Pertostom._ They got on board. Early on. Very early on.


	38. Chapter 38

“Are you _sure_ you won’t just jam the doors to Telford’s quarters— like— indefinitely?” Young asked somewhat forlornly.

Rush was sitting on the edge of the bed, fumbling with his boot laces. He looked up to glare at Young. “You’re not a serious person,” he said.

“Oh, I’m very serious.”

“You can’t forever put him off.” Rush yanked the laces into place and, a little wobbly-legged, stood.

“I could if you jammed his doors.” Young leaned in to steady him with a hand on his shoulder.

Rush shoved him off, irritated. “Not an invalid.”

“You are kind of an invalid, actually.”

 _“_ Tu _invalidos es._ ”

“Nope. You.”

Rush was doing a lot better, actually. When he was paying attention, and not trying to deliberately piss Young off, he had almost perfect English back. He’d been out of the infirmary for almost an entire day now; really, TJ had only kept him there in the first place because Young had talked her into it, on a platform of (1) she could make sure Rush ate, slept, and didn’t do anything stupid, and (2) she could keep Telford away from him. But three days of Rush had turned out to be more than even she could handle, and she’d eventually cut him loose. “I don’t think he likes me,” she’d told Young. Young had said evasively, “He doesn’t like anybody.” TJ had given him a _look._ She’d said, “He has a pretty good reason not to like me, don’t you think?” “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Young had said uncomfortably. She’d rolled her eyes. “Anyway, he’s stable, his temperature’s started to come up, the antivirals seem to be working, and he’s not generating random electrical fields, so all he’s doing is taking up space,” she pointed out. “And saying insulting things in Ancient.”

“Perfectly fine,” Rush said shortly. “Can deal with Telford.”

“Yeah. You could deal with him by jamming his doors.”

Rush threw him a withering look. “ _You_ can’t deal with Telford.”

“I just don’t see why we couldn’t have done this in the infirmary. That way, if you get tired, TJ could come chuck him out.”

“You mean if _you_ get tired.”

“Yeah, probably,” Young agreed. “Tired of his bullshit.”

The debate surrounding where and when to let Telford talk to Rush had been raging for pretty much the entirety of the last three days. Young would have preferred not to let Telford talk to Rush at _all_ , but failing that, holding the meeting in the infirmary would have offered some kind of control. Rush, though, wasn’t having it. “I am not a fucking consumptive,” he’d snapped. “I am not going to talk to him from my fucking fainting couch. I’m _fine_. _Understood?_ ” In the end, they’d compromised: they’d go meet Telford in a conference room on the CI room hallway, but afterwards Rush would take the rest of the day off. “ _Meaning_ ,” Young had said forbiddingly, “ _at home_ , watching movies or sleeping. Not doing ship stuff.” “Always doing ship stuff,” Rush had pointed out. “—In my head. Can’t stop me.” Young had sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He’d said, “If I come back and you’re spaced out, staring at the wall and freezing, you’re SOL. I’m not warming you up.” “Will,” Rush had said smugly. Young had said, “Not if you don’t start using pronouns.” Rush had looked even smugger. “Yes,” he’d said. “Will.”

“I did tell you he called you a piece of equipment,” Young said as they headed out into the hallway. “Right?”

“I am a piece of equipment,” Rush said. “Integral to ship’s functioning.”

“Genius, that’s not the way you talk about _people_.”

Rush shrugged. “I’m not _people._ ”

“ _Please_ don’t say that.”

Rush shrugged again.

Young tipped his head back, staring at the ceiling and wishing for an alien attack of some kind. “ _And_ he said you were a gun who couldn’t be left to your own devices.”

“Fucking spectacular gun,” Rush said, sounding pleased.

He’d gotten a heavily edited account of that conversation, from which Young had excluded all mentions of the laboratory incident and of sex, the latter of which was a topic that already seemed to be hanging uncomfortably over him and Rush. Neither of them had quite dared to bring it up. When Rush got out of the infirmary, there’d been a weird moment in Young’s quarters when they’d sort of glanced at each other sideways before they got into bed, and it wasn’t like it hadn’t been, well, pretty clear when they kissed in the infirmary that both of them were interested in _going to bed_ going to bed, but Rush’s mouth had tightened, and he’d gotten really defensive-looking, sort of prickly, and lain down facing away from Young. Young had felt some strange mixture of relieved and disappointed, mostly like he didn’t know what the fuck he was doing, and he didn’t want to fuck it up. “What, I’m getting the hedgehog treatment now?” he’d asked, lying down and propping his chin up with his hand. Rush had said tersely, “Not my job. Warm bed for you.” “No,” Young had said, drawing the word out, “you’ve made it pretty clear that it’s _my_ job to warm the bed for _you_. I’m just wondering why I’ve got the night off.” Rush had hunched his shoulders and said, “You do what you want. I don’t care. Not in the least important to me.” Young had sighed and rolled over to bury his face in the pillow. “Yeah, okay,” he’d said, his voice muffled. “I don’t know what I expected.”

But this morning, when he’d woken up, Rush had been wrapped around him like a starfish, drooling slightly on his shoulder. Young didn’t know what to make of that.

“You know that’s not a good thing,” he said now. “Being called a _gun._ It’s not a compliment.”

“Yes. It is a compliment.”

“I can tell this meeting’s going to go _really_ well.”

“It will be fine,” Rush said, unconcerned. “You are too worried.”

“I am the appropriate amount of worried. You are an _inappropriate_ amount of worried.”

“No.”

They had almost reached the conference room.

“Just— _please_ don’t—“ Young made a vague, frustrated hand gesture.

Rush stared at him skeptically.

“Come on. You know what I mean.”

“Never,” Rush said, and hit the door control.

Telford was waiting inside, looking poised and fresh-pressed. He hadn’t brought his team, which Young found… unnerving. Just a laptop computer. He was typing, but looked up as they came in.

“Nick,” he said, smiling. “I’m glad to see you’re feeling better.”

“I’m fine,” Rush said shortly, and took a seat.

“I would’ve come to visit you in the infirmary, but Lieutenant Johansen insisted that your condition was too delicate.”

Rush bristled. “I’m not fucking _delicate_ ,” he snapped.

“No,” Telford said, with an arch look at Young. “I didn’t think so.”

Young sighed and took a seat. Oh, yeah, he thought. This meeting was _definitely_ going to go _great_.

* * *

An hour later, Telford was eyeing Rush balefully. “I don’t see how it’s in any way _preposterous_ to establish exactly why the Nakai virus affected you so badly. For pretty obvious reasons, it’s important to know if it’s possible for us to take the Destiny’s CPU offline without affecting you under ordinary circumstances, i.e. _not_ involving a computer virus.”

“No,” Rush said.

“Is that, no, it’s not important, or no, it’s not possible to take the Destiny’s CPU offline?”

Rush shrugged.

Telford made a strangled, exasperated sound. “For fuck’s sake, could you at least pretend to be cooperating for once in your damn life?”

“I am cooperating,” Rush said, in his mildest, politest, most lying-ass voice. He smiled insincerely at Telford.

“Is it possible for us to take the Destiny’s CPU offline without affecting you?” Telford demanded.

“Unknown.”

“How can you _not know?_ ”

“Hasn’t been tested,” Rush said offhandedly. “It would be unscientific to speculate.”

Telford closed his eyes. A muscle in his face twitched. “How about we test it on you here and now? How does that sound?”

“That’s not happening,” Young cut in.

“Oh, of course it’s not,” Rush said comfortably. He leaned back in his chair, tossing his hair out of his eyes. “David’s aggravation has always manifested itself in increasingly unsubtle threats. It’s a terribly revealing trait for someone who prides himself on being unreadable in extremis.”

“And Nick’s insecurity has always manifested itself in obfuscation. He’s running so scared all the time that he can’t stand to give even the tiniest potential weapon up.” Telford tilted his head and looked at Rush, unsmiling. “You want to compare our weak points? Let me assure you, that’s not a battle that you’re going to win.”

Rush tipped his chair back idly, inspecting the fingernails of one hand. “And yet somehow here I sit. And there _you_ sit, begging me for little scraps of information. You always seem to end up begging me for something.”

“That’s a very dangerously one-sided version of events,” Telford said softly. “I seem to remember a lot more begging coming from the other direction. At least mine was a formality. I never really _have_ to ask for anything I want.”

“Don’t you?” Rush asked, looking up at Telford through his lashes. “Why, David. I should be flattered. You wasted so much time on me.”

“In the end,” Telford said, his tone controlled, “the other method turned out to be much more effective. That was when you really did your best-quality begging. As I recall.”

Young saw Rush’s breath stop in his throat. That was his only visible reaction. His eyes stayed lowered. He said very deliberately, “But it didn’t actually get you what you wanted, did it? Maybe you should remember that.”

“It did get me what I wanted,” Telford said, in the same low, even voice. “I just let it slip through my fingers.”

“Then I suppose,” Rush breathed, lifting his gaze and fixing it on him, “that’s why it’s your turn to beg.”

“I think we’re done here,” Young interrupted. He wasn’t sure in which way the conversation was going nuclear, if in fact it wasn’t going nuclear in more than one way at once, but he was damn sure he didn’t want the chain reaction continuing.

“We’re nowhere _near_ done,” Telford said sharply.

“For today we are. Make another appointment.”

“What, when Rush is _feeling_ better? Really, Nick?”

“Oh, come up with some new fucking tactics,” Rush snapped, seeming for the first time agitated. “I’m tired of the old ones.”

“That hurts my feelings,” Telford said mildly. “It really does.”

“This isn’t productive. We’re leaving.” Young stood and put a hand on Rush’s shoulder.

Rush shoved his hand off. “Don’t touch me,” he spat at him. He stood and slammed out of the conference room.

Telford raised an eyebrow. “Trouble in paradise?” he inquired.

“We’ll try to fit you into our busy schedule,” Young said shortly, and left.

Out in the corridor, Rush was leaning against a wall with his eyes closed. He spun away at Young’s approach and started limping determinedly in the opposite direction.

//Why do you do this? You know I’m going to catch up to you,// Young said in exasperation.

//Fuck off.// Rush was still having a hard time projecting— it took him a lot of mental energy— so it came off a little weaker than he might have wanted it to.

Sure enough, Young caught up to him at the end of the hall. “So. Turns out I wasn’t too worried,” he said, since Rush didn’t seem inclined to say anything.

Rush said shortly, “Would have been fine if you hadn’t—“

“Yeah, no, that’s not going to fly. That was an incredibly fucked-up conversation.”

“Next time I talk to him alone.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“You don’t control me.”

“No,” Young said, suddenly feel like he was at the very edge of his temper. “Believe me, I am acutely aware of that fact. You do whatever you _fucking_ want. But it seems like a little bit much to expect to be able to do whatever you fucking want and them come crawling back to my quarters at the end of the day, so—”

“I don’t _crawl!_ ” Rush said loudly. “ _Ne pulla rasteo; ne’emini ne rasteo!_ Fuck you!“

“Oh, my God.” Young turned to the face the wall in exasperation. “No one is asking you to! I’m saying _don’t_ do that! Just act like a reasonable fucking person! Let me help you. Don’t talk to Telford alone. Don’t argue with me every day about taking medical leave. Just— go back to my quarters and, I don’t care, fucking write diary entries all day on your laptop. Dear diary, today Colonel Young was very mean to me. I hate him. Here is my elaborate plot for revenge. _”_

Rush had turned away sharply at the last part of that, but that was because he was struggling to conceal a smile. He had an expression Young had only ever seen on him, a collision between sulky, lingering anger and the sabotaging effects of being amused. “Fuck you,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah. Put it in the diary, why don’t you.” Young waited till Rush gave up on trying to stay angry and mostly looked exasperated instead. “I would _appreciate_ it,” he said, “if you considered my suggestions. I’m going to go check with Eli about something, and then I’ve got a half-shift. I would _like_ it if you were in my quarters when I got back. No crawling required.”

Rush folded his arms and tried to look imposing. “We’ll see,” he said. “I might get a better offer.”

“Well, you just let me know if you do,” Young said, tapping his forehead. “I might be willing to counter.” He started walking backwards, heading for the control interface room.

“What happens if you don’t have the funds?” Rush called after him, half-challenging, half-teasing.

“I'm just saying,” Young said. “Don’t count me out yet.”

* * *

When Young got to the CI room, Eli and Brody were in the midst of a heated but very quiet conversation, their heads bent together behind the monitor banks

“No, I get what you mean,” Eli was saying, “but if it’s true that the Nakai were on board Destiny a long time ago, then one— why did they leave? And two— why didn’t they, or why couldn’t they, reboard? I’m just skeptical, is all. What exactly did he say to you?”

“It was just one of those pronouncement-type things he does, and then Greer—“ Brody broke off abruptly as he saw Young standing in the doorway. “Colonel. Hi.”

“—Hi,” Young said, narrowing his eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing!” Eli said quickly. “Just, um, the hypothetical but pretty clearly not actually all that hypothetical Nakai tracking device that we have to get off the ship. Can we talk to Rush about this soon? He’s going crazy with the medical leave thing anyway, as you may have noticed.”

“Rush can go back on duty when he manages to keep his temperature above ninety-five degrees for a whole day. I know he’s doing nothing but bitching, but he’s tired as hell, and it’s taking him a lot of energy to just— you know— be a person. Can’t you just put something together and run it by him?”

“Yeah, I’m sure we _can,_ ” Eli said, hesitating. “It just seems like he might, _possibly_ , have some information on this tracking device.”

“If he knew anything about it, don’t you think that by now he’d have told—“ Young stopped, cast his eyes up to the ceiling, and shook his head. “Forget I said that. Of course he knows something. Of _course_ he does. What. Just tell me.”

Brody looked uncomfortable. “Yesterday he and I were working on that… thing we were doing for Scott, and and Rush asked how the search for the tracking device was going. I said we were focusing on the exterior of the hull, because that was the only place the Nakai would have been able to access, because they never got on board the ship before our arrival, and they were already tracking it.”

“And he said?”

“He said they _had_ gotten on board, early in the Destiny’s mission.”

Young shut his eyes. “Great. That’s just great. Anything _else?_ ”

“No; that was pretty much it.”

“And were you planning to share this information with me anytime soon?”

“I, uh.” Brody fidgeted. “I figured you already knew?”

“Why would I know,” Young said, more to himself than anyone else. “I’m just the goddamn commander of this ship.”

“Hey,” Eli snapped unexpectedly. “There’s no indication he knows anything about the tracking device. All he knows is that the Nakai boarded Destiny at some point in the past, which is probably information he got from the ship’s memory banks, and might not have been consciously aware of until Brody said something. I know you don’t trust him, but not everything he does is designed to fuck us over!”

Young looked at him steadily for a moment. Brody had gone very quiet. “Eli,” he said eventually, “let’s take a walk.”

Eli looked like Young had suggested taking him out and shooting him. But he just dropped his eyes, grabbed his laptop, and muttered, “Yeah, okay.”

They left Brody in the CI room and walked to the observation deck. Eli was silent, twirling his pen nervously. Every so often he rubbed his eyes, which were still slightly bloodshot. The tic-like motion called attention to them.

“Do they still hurt?” Young asked. “The eyes?”

Eli flinched. “No. They’re fine. It just feels like I have something in them. What about, uh— your whole thing? With the—“ he gestured to his forearms. “And. You know.”

“Better. Getting dressed still hurts like hell. I haven’t really had time to think about it. I’ve been pretty distracted.”

“Yeah,” Eli said. “I guess you have been. How is he? Really?”

Young sighed. “Well, his English is mostly back. Don’t let him con you into thinking otherwise. But he’s really tired, which makes it hard for him to stay warm and process information. His mind is a mess from where we tore it apart and tried to glue it back together, he’s having full-on flashbacks, and he seems to have more than his own memories to flash back to. So, you know.” His mouth twisted. “Relatively, I’d say he’s doing medium-good.”

Eli looked down. “Yeah,” he said softly. They’d reached the observation deck, and he sat on the bench facing the viewscreen, facing the blur of stars.

Young stayed standing. “It’s hard,” he said. “It’s a shitty situation. What you went through— that’s not great, either. And the problem is, there’s no one you can hit to make it better. I mean– I know you’re not really a hitting kind of kid. Maybe in video games, or whatever.”

“I do excel at hitting people in video games,” Eli said. He smiled wanly.

“The thing that hurt you is already dead, and you never really knew who or what it was in the first place. It didn’t know who you were either. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that’s rough. I know it’s rough. It’s supposed to be simple. You kill whatever hurt you, and that’s it. When you can’t do that, it’s kind of like ammo getting jammed in a gun. The gun doesn’t have any way to shoot, so if you pull the trigger enough— it blows up instead.” He paused and looked at Eli. “But that’s a hell of a waste of a gun, when there are better ways to deal with the situation.”

“God,” Eli said thinly. “Don’t you know any non-military metaphors?”

“Actually, it’s an analogy,” Young said. “And no. Not really. Sorry.”

“Figures.” Eli was silent for a while. “Have you ever been through that?”

Young considered the question. “Have I ever been hurt? Yeah, of course. A hell of a lot. Have I ever been tortured? No.”

Eli stared at the floor. “But you know that— I mean, obviously, _he_ has.”

“Yes,” Young said. He didn’t know what else to say to that statement.

Eli nodded. He still wasn’t looking at Young. “So do you ever feel like—“

Young paused before answering. “Yeah,” he said in a low voice. “Not– about the Nakai. About other things. About an awful lot of other things, I guess.”

They both stared out at the star-blur for a while.

“I did actually want to talk to you about something,” Young said. “Not just– emotions, which as we can both tell, I’m not really equipped for.”

Eli gave him a tired, amused look. “You’re not that bad. But go ahead.”

“Have you ever come across anything in the database about the— what’s it called, the curator, the person who sits in the chair, combining with the AI?”

“You mean like how he links up with the ship to do stuff?” Eli asked.

“No. The AI itself. Two entities turning into one.”

“No,” Eli said, frowning. “I don’t even know how that would be possible. I mean, there’s some overlap in terms of job description, but not, like, in any direct practical way. Mostly it runs in the background, helping Rush out with stuff. Although I haven’t seen it that much in the last month.”

“You see it?” Young asked, surprised.

“Not, like, the way you guys do, I guess. It doesn’t show up to me as a person or anything. I just mean in the systems of the ship. But by this point it’s turned over pretty much everything to us. Why are you asking me this stuff?”

“I haven’t seen it since you took the CPU down. It should be around by now, and I just find its absence… a little worrying.”

“Well, we reintegrated its code,” Elli said, his eyebrows drawing together. “There’s no practical reason it shouldn’t be here. Have you asked Rush?”

“He hasn’t said anything,” Young said, “and I haven’t asked him.”

“Didn’t he freak out the last time it went missing?”

“Well, you say _he freaked out_ , I say _the ship dumped a bunch of dopamine in his brain and drove him nuts._ To-may-to, to-mah-to. _”_

“Yikes.”

“It was kind of trying to do some in-depth counseling.”

“Like, _psychological_ counseling?”

“Yeah. It was pretty weird and invasive and traumatic,” Young said.

“Right. You got snapped in on that one. I am _so_ glad I’m not either of you guys.”

“Ideally, we’d like to avoid having a repeat of that whole thing. I don’t think it’s likely, but just…”

“Right,” Eli said. “I’ll keep an eye out. And I’ll look into the whole combining issue, or whatever.”

“Thanks,” Young said, clapping him on the shoulder. “I appreciate it. And if you ever want to talk about the other thing…”

Eli wrinkled his nose. “I kind of really don’t. But maybe that’s part of it, I guess? I’ll— keep it in mind.” His face cleared. “Oh, and I’ve got something for you.” He hit a button on his laptop computer and ejected a DVD. “It’s a campaign contribution.”

“Okay, will someone please explain this _campaign_ I keep hearing about?” Young asked, with a hint of exasperation.

“There’s actually two campaigns,” Eli said. “This little baby here is courtesy of the Colonel-Young-is-an-idiot-and-didn’t-request-anything-from-Earth campaign, not to be confused with the equally popular increase-the-cultural-literacy-of-Nicholas-Rush campaign.”

Young stared at him.

“There was a sign-up sheet for people to donate part of their personal items. I think James got him a box set of _Deadwood_ , which, trust me, is the type of influence he does not need.”

Young looked down at the DVD he was holding. Scrawled on it in Eli’s sloppy hand was: _Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid_.

“You both like it. I figured it’s like the only thing you have in common,” Eli said, shrugging. “At least you can spend two hours not arguing, right?

“Come on. We’ve made it four hours before, least.”

Eli looked skeptical. “Was Rush unconscious at the time?”

“I’m going to tell him you said that,” Young said.

“You realize he’ll think it’s a compliment.”

Young rolled his eyes. “I know.” He turned to go, waving the DVD in the air. “Thanks for this. I _guess_.”

* * *

When he got back to his quarters four hours later, he wasn’t surprised to find Rush there, as he always had a more-or-less accurate sense of Rush’s location. He was, however, _extremely_ surprised to find that Rush was apparently hosting a poker tournament with Chloe, TJ, and Varro. No one involved looked particularly excited to be there. Rush was glaring at TJ, who was wearing a thin and artificially pleasant expression. Varro’s hackles were up, and Chloe was staring at her hand of cards like she was wondering if it was possible to climb inside them and disappear.

“Hey,” Young said, drawing the word out slowly. “I didn’t realize it was game night. How come I wasn’t invited?”

To Rush, privately, he said, //What the hell?//

//They showed up,// Rush said irritably. //And wouldn’t leave. _Someone_ seems to have convinced Tamara that I require a fucking babysitter.//

//Well—// Young began.

//Fuck you,// Rush said shortly. //I’m here, aren’t I?//

//True,// Young said neutrally.

“I thought Dr. Rush could use some company,” TJ said, struggling to sound enthused. “Seeing as how he’s on medical leave.”

//She means she wanted to stop me from breaking your ridiculous rules about working,// Rush said. It was taking him a lot of energy to project. //Which I would have done immediately, by the way.//

//So what you’re saying is that you do, in fact, require a fucking babysitter.//

Rush sent him a wave of seething aggravation in response.

“So who’s winning?” Young asked, eyeing the table. It looked like they were playing for raisins, which: who the hell had bothered to request _raisins_ from Earth? Probably TJ had put in a request for health food, or something.

“It’s not about _winning_ ,” TJ said disapprovingly.

“She and Varro are playing as a team,” Chloe said in a long-suffering tone. “And still losing. They said that Dr. Rush and I cheat.”

“You do cheat,” TJ and Varro said, almost in unison. They paused and looked at each other and laughed. “Jinx,” TJ said, and Varro complained, “I still don’t understand the nature of this _jinx_.”

Young was hit by a slight twinge of– something. Covetousness, maybe. It felt like an echo, or a phantom pain, something he’d gotten used to feeling, and now didn’t, but thought he still ought to.

“Superior mental faculties are not _cheating_ ,” Rush snapped abruptly. “It’s hardly my fault that you’re incapable of mastering basic mathematical skills.”

//Whoa, there,// Young said, surprised. //Want to cool it down?//

// _No._ //

“Pretty sure card-counting _is_ cheating,” TJ said, displaying a truly unbelievable amount of patience. “And also not a basic mathematical skill.”

“I’ve got three kings!” Chloe said with forced brightness. “Or is it trip kings? Do people say that? I want to sound like a real card shark.”

Varro frowned, drawing his eyebrows together. “A card… shark?”

“Oh, get a fucking dictionary, why don’t you,” Rush bit out, and pushed himself to an unsteady standing position.

“We haven’t finished the game,” Chloe said steadily, giving him a _look_. “Don’t be rude.”

//What’s going on?// Young asked. //Are you feeling okay?//

//I fucking despise that question. And I fucking despise raisins. And poker is—// Rush broke off, exhausted with projecting. “A fucking _American_ game for the small-minded that encourages the mystification of probability. I fucking despise it also.”

He hurled his cards at the table. He’d been holding a full house.

There was a short silence.

Chloe said levelly, “It’s also rude to talk behind people’s backs.”

Rush made a wordless noise of frustration. “ _Ab ted documenta ethica ne pulla indeo. Puella es._ ”

“I thought we’d agreed that we were speaking English now,” Young said, trying to keep his tone even.

“Fuck you. Patronizing first-person plural.” Rush tried to push past him, and stumbled. Young caught his arm. “Don’t touch me,” Rush hissed, shoving away from him. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

He stalked to the bathroom and sent the door slamming shut behind him. Young heard the lock engage. He could feel Rush trying to rein in an inexplicable tide of panic.

“Right,” TJ said into the ensuing silence. “No poker. Okay.”

Young sighed. “It’s not your fault.”

“I guess I kind of thought that if—“ She gestured to Varro. “He might get the idea that—“

Young frowned. “What?”

TJ tilted her head and stared at him. “Really?”

“I think he mostly just hates people babysitting him.”

TJ cast her eyes up to the ceiling. “I’m sure that’s part of it,” she said, sounding resigned.

She stood, collecting the cards from around the table. “He was going to win, of course,” she said. “He always wins.”

“I win _sometimes_ ,” Chloe said mildly.

“That’s why you get to keep the raisins. He’d just refuse to eat them, anyway.” TJ glanced at Young. “But he needs to eat dinner. I left food in the bag on the sofa.” She nodded towards it. “His meds are in there, too. And his laptop.”

“Thanks for trying,” Young said. “I’m sorry about—“

She shrugged. “It’s not _your_ fault, either.”

“Well.”

He hugged her briefly, struck again by that faint melancholy sense. The scent of her hair was so familiar.

She and Varro departed, leaving Chloe behind, scooping up the raisins into a ziplock bag.

“Is he going to be okay?” Chloe asked quietly, after the door hissed shut behind them.

Young let himself collapse onto the sofa. “Yeah. Sorry for ruining your game.”

Chloe shrugged. “No one was having a good time. He’s been really edgy all day. And he’s jealous of TJ.”

“ _Jealous?_ ” Young repeated.

She gave him a pitying look.

“I think you’re misreading the signals. That’s not what’s going on here,” Young said uncomfortably. “Not— I mean, he’s not— and anyway, TJ and I, we were over ages ago.”

Chloe looked at him for a long moment. “I’m sure you’re right,” she said.

When she’d gone, Young stayed on the couch for another few minutes, staring up at the ceiling. He could feel Rush’s headache in the back of his mind, laid over something knotted and unhappy that Rush was trying to keep him from seeing. Eventually, Young stripped his jacket and boots off and went to knock on the bathroom door. There was no answer.

He rested his head against it. “Rush,” he said.

No answer.

He leaned against the door and let himself slide to the ground, folding his knees up. //Are you seriously hiding in the bathroom?//

//Only place to get any fucking privacy around here.//

//People worry about you.//

//They can go—//

//I _know_ you’re not going to say _they can go fuck themselves_ , because that would make me very annoyed.//

//They can go find another fucking lost cause to dump their pity on,// Rush said.

//You’re not a lost cause.//

//No?//

//I know exactly where you are. You’re splayed out on my bathmat.//

//I’m sure you think that’s the height of wit.//

//Nah. I could do better. But I’m pretty tired. Want to open the door?//

//No.//

//Please?//

Rush sighed. //Fine.//

The door abruptly slid open behind Young, and he fell back onto the tiled floor. “God, _Rush._ How about a little warning?”

“I said _fine_.”

Rush wasn’t actually splayed on the bathmat. He was curled up into a tight knot, shivering violently. His hands were tucked into the sleeves of his jacket. His knees were drawn up to his chest. His eyes were shut.

Young slowly pulled himself into a sitting position. “You couldn’t just tell me?” he asked in a low voice.

“Fuck off,” Rush said miserably.

“What’s—“

Rush sent him a sharp flash of the world dissolving into interactions of atoms, coming in and out of focus, reeling out of shape, periodically interrupted by thunderous bursts of code, the information piling up in his head in road-jams of loud, demanding data, pulsing against his temples till all he wanted was to get rid of it. It was enough to make Young feel sick, and he was getting it secondhand.

“Oh,” Young said quietly. “Is there anything I can do?”

“No.”

“Can I— you’ve been pretty touch-me-and-die today, which, by the way, you might think about why that is, I’m just saying—”

Rush shrugged listlessly. “No reason,” he said.

“Yeah. Right. But can I—?” He projected a brief, tentative image of his hand stroking down Rush’s back.

Rush curled up even tighter, a defensive posture. “Yes. Only. No other touching.”

Young reached out and laid his hand between Rush’s shoulder blades. “Right,” he said softly. “No other touching.”

Rush pushed towards him a little, giving Young easier access. Young let his hand trail down his back, tried to mimic the smooth, even, heavy touch that Rush had liked in the infirmary. Rush made a small affirmative sound.

“ _Estod adprobo_ ,” he murmured. His eyes were still closed.

“Yeah. I know.”

“Let’s go get drunk.”

“Say again?”

“You and me. Drinking,” Rush said without moving. “Let’s go.”

Young rolled his eyes. “Yeah, okay. That sounds like a fantastic idea. Let’s just go get you completely trashed, huh?”

“Rude. Serious suggestion.” Rush was smiling faintly, but there was something wistful in his voice.

“You already can’t walk in a straight line.”

“Could.”

“Uh-huh. And all of this is what, just a bunch of drama?”

“Very dramatic person.”

“I can’t argue with that.” Young briefly transferred his hand to Rush’s forehead, which was freezing. “You want me to get you a blanket? Three blankets?”

“I’ll get up. In a minute.”

“Sure you will.” Young returned to stroking his back. After a while, he said, “So why are you mad at TJ?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you don’t,” Young said. “You know, Chloe has a theory that you’re jealous of her. Of TJ.”

“Ridiculous.”

“That’s what I said.”

“What’s there to be jealous of?” Rush asked flatly. “Tamara is a very ordinary person. Human version of white picket fence. Very nice. Limited mathematical skills. Bad at poker.”

“I thought poker was for small minds.”

“Yes,” Rush said, sounding exhausted. “Are you sure we can’t go drinking?”

“Pretty sure. We can eat dinner, though. TJ left some for us.”

“Ugh.”

“Come on. Let’s get up off the floor.” Young attempted to get a hand under Rush’s elbow, only for Rush to shove him away.

“ _No other touching_ ,” Rush snapped _._ “Do you not think I’m fucking capable of standing on my own two feet?”

“Sure,” Young said, suppressing a sigh. “Go for it.”

Rush glared at him and pushed himself unsteadily up, grabbing for the sink to retain his balance. He looked terrible, and when he tried to transfer his weight to the wall, the overhead light started flickering wildly.

“If you short out my bathroom light, I’m sending you back to the infirmary,” Young said, standing. “Can you make it to the bed?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Rush said venomously, and proved it by gritting his teeth and lurching from object to object until he fell face-forward onto the duvet.

“Nice. You really stuck the landing there,” Young said.

“Fuck you,” Rush said, his voice muffled.

Young grabbed the white bag that TJ had left on the sofa and carried it over. By that point, Rush had managed to get himself more-or-less upright and wrapped in a stray blanket. Young put the bag between them and started rooting through it. “It looks like your unbelievable whining about the protein paste has finally paid off. There’s actual food in here.” The bag contained two MREs, spaghetti with meat sauce and mac and cheese, as well as a Tupperware container full of homemade cookies, which— in context— was one of the most surreal things Young had seen in recent weeks. The Tupperware container had a note on it that said: _For the Colonel Young is an Idiot Campaign. PERISHABLE. —James._ Young grinned at the note and passed it to Rush.

Rush glanced at it. “Interesting,” he said.

Young frowned at him. “Interesting?”

“Mm.” Rush handed the note back.

Young looked down at it, then up at Rush. His eyes narrowed. “Just tell me,” he said resignedly.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“ _Rush_.”

Rush looked away. “I can’t read English,” he said.

Young stared at him.

Rush said nothing.

“How long have you known?” Young asked finally.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes, it fucking matters that you’ve been _hiding_ shit from me!” Chloe’s note, Young thought. He had shown Rush Chloe’s note, the morning after he’d fixed Rush’s mind, as a stupid reward for being willing to go to sleep. And of course Rush had understood it, because Chloe had included those neat little columns of Ancient, but Rush had stared at the English and known then and not said a fucking word—

“It’s none of your business!” Rush retorted shortly. His whole body had tensed, and his shivering had worsened. “What fucking difference does it make to you?”

“It makes a _difference!_ ” Young snapped at him.

“I’ll get it back. Most likely.”

“Most _likely?_ ”

Rush let out a sharp exhale. “If I spent five minutes staring at the note, I’m sure I could figure out what it said. But that would be a waste of my time and yours, so can we just— eat dinner?” There was the barest hint of something almost pleading in his voice.

Young sighed. “Fine,” he said, trying to summon up a light, normal tone. “But I don’t remember signing up for another Continuing Education class, so don’t expect me to learn to read Ancient for you.”

“ _No one asked you to_ ,” Rush bit out with sudden and surprising violence. “No one asked you to do _anything of the sort_.” He turned away, facing the wall, drawing his knees up to his chest.

“Whoa—“ Young said, taken aback. “Stop. Rush— I was joking, okay?”

“ _Ne’m. Asteiom n’est._ ”

“Yes. I was joking. I’m just sick of you hiding things from me. That’s all.” Young risked reaching out and putting a hand on his arm.

Rush’s eyes went to Young’s hand, and he seemed to be considering another round of the _don’t-fucking-touch-me_ game, which frankly Young was getting a little tired of. But instead he just shook Young’s touch off and said tightly, “Fine.” 

Young passed him the container of cookies, carefully not looking at him. “These are from James.”

Rush propped his head on his hand and stared at the container without touching any of the cookies. Eventually he said, his tone equally careful, “ _From_ James?”

“Yup.”

“Have people been giving you things as well?”

“Why; have they been giving _you_ things?”

“Eli gave me an entire digital array of films, most of which I’ve never heard of, arranged in the order that he wants me to watch them. I find this extremely optimistic on his part. Chloe gave me an _iPod_ filled with a truly baffling selection of music, and a t-shirt that is not to be spoken of again.”

“Yeah, I think those are all campaign contributions,” Young said, smiling in spite of himself.

“Campaign?”

“Before everyone submitted their requests for personal items to Earth, Eli started a campaign to increase your cultural literacy.”

Rush stared at him.

“In fact, he named it the increase-the-cultural-literacy-of-Nicholas-Rush campaign.”

“I’m going to murder him,” Rush said.

“He likes you.”

“He likes to _torment_ me,” Rush said. “And I can’t imagine there’s not some Colonel Young equivalent of—“

“Oh, there is. It’s called the Colonel-Young-is-an-idiot-and-requested-nothing-from-Earth campaign.”

Rush smirked. “The Colonel Young is an idiot campaign,” he repeated with evident satisfaction. “Very aptly named. Why didn’t you request anything?”

Young shrugged. “There was nothing on Earth I wanted. I figured I might as well give the weight to someone else.”

“Very noble of you.”

“Oh, and what did you request? Something extremely normal, I’m sure.”

“You already know what I requested. The textbook for Chloe and Eli.”

“ _That_ was your personal request?”

“Do you know how much my life will personally improve if Eli learns quantum mechanics?” Rush retorted.

Young shook his head. “Yeah, yeah.” He held up the MRE packages. “If you’re not going to eat cookies, you’re eating real food. Mac and cheese, or spaghetti?”

“Pass,” Rush said, suddenly expressionless.

“Come on. I promised TJ you’d eat dinner.” Young tossed the package of spaghetti towards him.

Rush glanced at it and turned his head away. For a moment, he couldn’t quite keep Young from feeling the intense nausea he’d been suppressing.

“—Oh,” Young said quietly.

“I don’t—“ Rush said thickly, swallowing. “I don’t think I can eat right now. Maybe later.”

“Yeah.” Young didn’t think trying to eat would go well for either of them. He collected the food and shoved it back into the bag, where he wouldn’t have to see it. “You want some water?” he asked tentatively.

“No,” Rush whispered. His eyes were squeezed shut. “Please don’t talk to me right now. Can you just go— do something else?”

“Sure,” Young murmured.

He stood and went to fill a cup with water anyway. He thought that hot water would do Rush more good, but he had to settle for room temperature, since they didn’t have hot-and-cold running water on Destiny. Something for Rush to do something about, maybe, if he was going to play ship whisperer all the time.

When he re-entered the room, Rush had curled up on the bed in the same pose he’d adopted on the bathroom floor, albeit with the minor improvement of the blanket. Young set the cup of water on the nightstand and sat on the edge of the bed next to him.

“Hey,” he said in a hushed voice.

“Can’t you go away?” Rush managed. “ _Ne welho—_ I don’t want you here if I—“

“Not going to happen,” Young said. He reached out and combed the hair back from Rush’s face. “ _Duenos? Tangeo?_ ”

“Yes,” Rush whispered.

“Okay. You’re really cold. Do you want me to—“

Rush pressed his lips tightly together and nodded miserably.

So Young lay down carefully behind him, tugging the blanket up over them both. He wrapped his arms around Rush and breathed against the back of his neck, trying to warm him. For a long time they just stayed like that: Rush shuddering convulsively, and Young holding him, occasionally stroking a hand through his hair.

“Irony,” Rush said unsteadily after a while. “I used to– t-tell Gloria to think of ice. When she was—” He broke off.

“Don’t think of ice,” Young said softly. “Think of something warm.”

Rush made a shaky affirmative sound. “Can you— I want—“

“What?” Young whispered.

“Nothing. Never mind.”

Young laced their fingers together. “What?”

Rush curled tighter into himself. He didn’t say anything for a long time. Then, almost soundlessly, he said, “I want to go to the cabin.”

Young let his head drop back against the bed. “I don’t know if I can,” he said. “I’ve only ever done it without really meaning to. I’ll try.”

He tried to remember what it felt like to hold onto Rush’s mind, as though it were something he could carry with him, a physical thing. Like he was drawing Rush up from the cavern, he thought, the whole ecosystem of him, but in some dense and portable way. He had never tried to picture it before. It always felt like he was _pulling_ Rush, somehow, like he had grabbed ahold of Rush’s hand, and that thought triggered a vague memory of a dream. He _had_ grabbed Rush’s hand. They’d been— somewhere that Rush didn’t want to be. Young had taken him by the hand and dragged him away into a still, warm, quiet place.

Tentatively, he brought their minds together. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. Rush was— really sick. His head ached with the effort of trying to hold the world together. He kept feeling like he was going to slip between the molecules of the bed, like his whole body was going to dissolve, and only sheer willfulness was holding it together; the wave-particle duality of the pale light from the bedside lamp was forcing him to think in quantum mechanical terms, which nauseated him even more, and heat kept leeching out of his body, and he couldn’t get it back, and on some basic animal level he was panicked at the thought of entropy; he could feel its dark mouth sucking at him, the whole universe as something hungry that he couldn’t get away from, wanting to break him up and scatter him in so many different directions that he’d never be able to pull himself together again—

Young tried to get ahold of his hand and—

 _get the fire going, poking at the logs of pinewood, while_  
_Rush is curled on the leather sofa, wrapped in a bright_  
_red-and-black patterned Navajo blanket. Young says_  
_I know, it can get pretty cold up here, even in the summer._  
_It’s, you know, the altitude. Hang on though and it’ll_  
_warm up any minute now, I promise._  
  
“Yes,” Rush murmured. “Like that.”  
  
_The smell of woodsmoke is sweet and fresh and some-_  
_how unsickening, like it’s wiping away some kind of_  
_uneasiness in the room. Young dusts his hands off and_  
_goes to sit on the sofa with Rush. I guess you’re not_  
_much into skiing, he says. That’s what the cold is really_  
_good for. Fresh powder on the mountains. Rush huffs._  
Idiot pastime, _he says._ Asking for head injury. Explains  
much about you _._

“I can’t believe you, of all people, are ragging on me for being risky,” Young said with a faint smile, stroking his thumb over Rush’s hand. “You goddamn—“

 _hypocrite._ Yes well _, Rush says imperiously, pulling the_  
_blanket tighter around him._ My risks— worth taking. _Keep_  
_telling yourself that,_ _Young says. Then something occurs_  
_to him. Hey, you’re talking again._ Be more obvious. _Young_  
_rolls his eyes and drapes his arm over Rush’s shoulders._  
_He says, I go to all the trouble to light a fire for you and what_  
_do I get? The same as ever. Bitch bitch bitch._ _Rush nestles_  
_closer to him. The room is warming._ I can light my own fires,  
_Rush murmurs. Yeah, Young says, but you’d end up burning_  
_the whole place down._ Unlikely. _Very likely._

 _“Ne quomodo hod facies scio_ ,” Rush whispered.

“But it helps?”

Rush said very quietly, “Yes.”

His mind was settling, objects solidifying out of particles wobbling in space. The nausea had faded a little.

“So not such a bad idea,” Young said.

 _“_ Very bad idea. _You’re_ a bad idea.”

“Yeah, but you like me anyway.

No, _Rush says petulantly. Yes, Young says. You are the most_  
_argumentative fucking person—_ No _, Rush says again, with-_  
_out much energy. His head is heavy on Young’s shoulder, and_  
_his breathing has grown steady. He’s not shivering anymore._  
_Yes, you are, Young says affectionately, and reaches over_  
_to tuck Rush’s hair behind his ear._ Mm _, Rush says drowsily._  
_Young pokes him. Hey, don’t fall—_

“—asleep. You’ll just end up waking up in the middle of the night. And you haven’t eaten dinner.”

Rush made a groggy noise.

Young shook him gently. “Come on. It’s going to help if you—“

“I _cannot_ eat right now,” Rush said indistinctly, without opening his eyes.

“No. I’ve got another idea.” Young said. “Here, move over.”

He shifted them so that they were lying in the center of the bed, Young still wrapped around Rush’s body. He reached over to grab Rush’s laptop from the white bag, and set it on the duvet in front of them.

“You’re giving my laptop?” Rush said suspiciously, squinting at it.

“Nope. We’re going to watch a movie.”

Rush groaned, and buried his face in the duvet. “Do you have any idea how many fucking movies I’ve been forced to watch in the past three days, undoubtedly thanks to Eli’s inexcusable campaign?”

“What a hardship,” Young said dryly.

“I fucking despise movies.”

“Not this one, you don’t.”

“Yes. All movies.”

“No.” Young slid the DVD in.

Predictably, Rush gave up complaining within the first few minutes, and he was absorbed enough that Young managed to get him to eat two cookies and about half an MRE. That, Young figured, was pretty much an unqualified success. Rush also fell asleep about fifteen minutes before the final scene. which wasn’t so bad either; after all, Young thought, the ending of the movie was fairly grim.

* * *

_Snow is falling outside the window in big pretty flakes, obscuring the ridge of the mountain-tops, so that Young can’t really see what’s outside the cabin. He pauses in the act of making coffee and frowns for a minute, because he can’t actually remember what’s outside the cabin. It seems like a lot of different things are outside the cabin, but he’s not sure what they are or how they fit together. It’s sort of like the cabin itself, which used to only have one bedroom, a living room, and a loft, but now has a music room and a library and a whole upstairs. He hasn’t actually been upstairs, but he’s aware it’s gotten bigger. The whole shape of the stairway has changed._

_Someone knocks on the door— well,_ someone _; he knows it’s Rush, because it’s always Rush— and he goes to answer it. Rush is standing there barefoot, wearing a thin t-shirt and jeans, shivering pitiably in the snowstorm._

_Young sighs. “I thought we warmed you up.”_

_“Entropy,” Rush says with a shrug. He marches in and curls up on the sofa, grabbing a blanket and pulling it around himself._

_“Nice to see you too,” Young said, shutting the door. “Especially since you stood me up last night.”_

_“Not sociable. Bad idea. Shouldn’t be here.”_

_“Yeah. You keep saying that.”_

_“True. I say only true things.”_

_“That is an incredible piece of bald-faced horseshit.”_

_Rush shrugs. “Don’t lie. Just don’t always give all details. Can’t help if smarter than you.”_

_“I think I liked you better when you didn’t talk.”_

_Rush’s face goes stony, and turns his head away._

_Young sighs again and leans against the couch. “I didn’t mean it like that.”_

_“Did.”_

_“Actually, I wish you’d talk to me more.”_

_“Tell you secrets.” Rush huffed. “Not going to happen.”_

_“Not everything is a secret,” Young said, exasperated._

_“Yes. Everything.”_

_Young makes a frustrated gesture. “Fine. I don’t even know why you came here if all you want to do is pick a fight.”_

_“Not picking a fight,” Rush says, stubborn. “Sociable. Showed up, didn’t I?”_

_“You have an interesting definition of what_ sociable _means.”_

_“Means,” Rush says, “I wanted—“ He stops and presses his lips into a thin line._

_“What?” Young asks._

_“Nothing. Means nothing. Leave me alone. Go away.”_

_Young cast his eyes to the ceiling. “You know what? Fine. I’m going to go finish making coffee. You can do whatever the hell you want.”_

_“Fine,” Rush agrees shortly._

_So Young goes back into the kitchen, feeling thunderous. He yanks a mug out of the cupboard and waits for the coffee to finish brewing. He hears Rush get up from the sofa and pad across the floor. A few minutes later, dark, sullen music starts pounding out of the piano. Young is torn between smiling and rolling his eyes, because it seems just like Rush to refuse to talk, yet also be incapable of not inflicting his mood on other people._

_He pours himself a mug of coffee and wanders over to the music room, leaning in the doorway. Rush is glaring ferociously at the piano keys as though they’ve personally wronged him. He actually makes it to the end of whatever he’s playing this time, although maybe that’s because it’s only a couple of minutes long. After the last gloomy note, he sits there for a moment._

_“Nice,” Young says at last. “I enjoyed that.”_

_“You would,” Rush says disdainfully. “No taste.”_

_“Yeah, yeah. There’s coffee in the kitchen, if you want some.”_

_“Should go.” Rush stands up. “Work to do.”_

_“Aren’t you even going to give me a puzzle? I’m not sure I worked the last one out.”_

_Rush looks at him suspiciously. “Trying to make me come back.”_

_“Yes. You’ve discovered my sinister ulterior motive. The one I flat-out told you in the first place. Was it_ it helps? _The B and the C?”_

_“No. You’re bad at this.” Rush throws the blanket at him and heads for the door._

_Young sighs. “Was I close?” he calls after him._

_All he gets in response is the door slamming closed._

_He bends down to pick up the blanket. “Fuck,” he says softly. “Fuck.”_

* * *

Young woke in the middle of the night, shaking off the remnants of a dream he could only half-remember. They’d been in the cabin again. He was pretty sure that Rush was always actually in that kind of dream; he didn’t think his mind was capable of producing such an accurately frustrating version of Rush. Rush had stormed out, and–

And now he knew why, because Rush was awake, sitting up in bed with his glasses on, hunched over a book and using his iPhone as a flashlight.

“Fuck,” Rush whispered. “ _Et quod hod?”_

Very carefully, Young let his mind creep closer to Rush’s, until he could see the shape of the AI sitting on the edge of the bed, looking like Daniel Jackson.

“ _Apostrophos est_ ,” the AI said. “An apostrophe. Representing a elided character.”

“ _Sicut couldn’t_.”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“ _A man is all the people he has been,_ ” Rush read slowly, stumbling painfully through the words. “ _Some recollections never die. They lie in one’s subconsc— in one’s—_ fuck.”

“Subconscious,” the AI provided quietly.

“ _They lie in one’s subconscious, squirreled away, biding their time. Now mine were surfacing in a disconcerting manner.”_

 _“Denovod_ ,” the AI said. “Make it sound like English. _Subconscious. Disconcerting._ _Some._ ”

“You’re barely sentient,” Rush snapped at it. “ _Megei ne pertenet quod cresdes._ ”

“You’re a jerk,” the AI said, sounding amused. “And speaking in Ancient will not help you acquire this skill. Which, I maintain, you do not need.”

“I’m not going to be fucking illiterate. Do you have any idea how much that would undermine my intellectual credibility?”

“Then why did you not practice this _earlier_ , with Colonel Young?”

“Because,” Rush whispered, staring at the book.

“Because why?”

“Because there’s only so much one person can take, all right?”

“I don’t understand,” the AI said.

“ _Ne pulla pertenet,_ ” Rush bit out. He bent back over the book. “ _They lie in one’s subconscious, squirreled away, biding their time. Now mine were surfacing in a disconcerting manner.”_

 _“_ Better,” the AI said softly. “Much better.”

Young shut his eyes. It was a long time before he went back to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The passage Rush reads at the end is from William Manchester's _Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War_.
> 
> Rush's emo piano piece is the opening section of [Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdH1hSWGFGU)
> 
>  _Ne pulla rasteo; ne’emini ne rasteo_ = I don't fucking crawl; I don't crawl for anyone  
>  _Ab ted documenta ethica ne pulla indeo. Puella es_ = I don't fucking need moral lessons from you. You're a child.  
>  _Asteiom n’est_ = It's not a joke  
>  _Tangeo_ = I touch  
>  _Ne quomodo hod facies scio_ = I don't know how you do this  
>  _Sicut couldn't_ = Like _couldn't_  
>  _Denovod_ = Again  
>  _Megei ne pertenet quod cresdes_ = It doesn't matter to me what you think  
>  _Ne pulla pertenet_ = It doesn't fucking matter.


	39. Chapter 39

Young stood in the doorway of the control interface room, his arms folded across his chest, as though he could physically contain the rising tide of his irritation. He was watching as Rush tried to stay awake through the end of the science team’s briefing on the search for the Nakai tracking device. Rush had wriggled his way out of medical leave and onto light duty, largely due to playing the pity card after the misery of the previous day. Young had defined “light duty” as four hours of minimally intensive work. So far, Rush had already put in eight.

Young’s mood wasn’t helped by the fact that Telford was sitting in on the briefing, leaning against a console to the left of Rush. Telford’s eyes had drifted to Young when he entered the room, though he’d evidenced no other reaction.

“So,” Volker was saying, “I think that the sweep is a reasonable first step, just to rule things out, before we start getting more creative. At the very least, we know we’re not looking for something on the hull. That’s—“

“Hey, guys,” Young said mildly, from the back of the room.

Heads turned.

Surprised, Volker fumbled his pen and dropped it. “Oh, uh. Hey, Colonel. How can I, uh, help you?”

“I just thought I’d drop in. Must be quite an interesting briefing you’re having, considering that two members of your audience aren’t actually supposed to be here.”

Volker looked uncomfortable. His gaze darted to Telford and Rush. “I, uh—“

“My team is involved in the search for the tracking device,” Telford said sharply. “You’ve got no rationale for kicking me out.”

Young ignored him. “I’m also wondering if I’ve developed some sort of speech defect, since I thought I specifically said that Rush was on light duty. _None_ of you guys could get him out? Where’s Chloe?”

“She has the night off,” Volker said, shamefaced, just as Rush snapped, “Don’t talk about me in the third person. I’m sitting right fucking here.”

“You sure are,” Young said. “If you weren’t, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“This is a tactically significant briefing,” Telford said. “Considering Rush’s role in the ship, I think it’s more than reasonable for him to be here.”

“I just bet you do,” Young said shortly.

“And what is _that_ supposed to mean?” Rush bit at him.

“Look,” Telford said, holding his hands up. “Everett. It’s hardly going to kill him to just sit in a room.”

“ _You_ don’t have the relevant information to make that judgement,” Young said with asperity.

Telford retorted, “No, because you keep cutting me out of the loop!”

“This discussion’s over,” Young said. “Rush— you’re off-duty tomorrow.”

“The fuck I am!” Rush said hotly. “We’re sweeping the ship for subspace transponders tomorrow. This is a _high priority_ project, unless you fancy another space battle, or— I don’t now— maybe you’re absolutely gasping for another Nakai incursion onto the ship?”

“I’m aware that it’s a high priority project,” Young said levelly. “But _you_ need to be aware that there’s a lot riding on your physical and mental wellbeing, and—“

“I think Nick’s very aware of that,” Telford interrupted. “Don’t you think it’s a little unfair to—“

Young held a hand up to cut him off. He turned and looked at Volker. In as even a tone as he could manage, he asked, “Would you mind giving us the room?”

Volker gaped for a moment, and then said nervously, “Uh, yeah, of course. Guys— we can— move to the rec room. I guess.”

The rest of the science team filed out, not quite managing to conceal their guilty curiosity.

“How fucking dare you,” Rush said viciously as soon as they were gone. “You can play tin-pot despot all you want with your own people, but you are _not_ in charge of this science team.”

“ _You’re_ not in charge of this science team, either, while you’re recovering from a _major_ _neurological event_.”

“I’m fine!” Rush raked an agitated hand through his hair. “I’m fucking _fine!_ ”

“Right. You’re so fine. Maybe you could pull up some files on your laptop and read them out to us, just to prove how fine you are.”

Young was unprepared for the venomousness of the look that Rush shot him. It had a furious, slightly panicked edge. Rush slammed his laptop closed and started to stand. “I don’t have to sit here and listen to this,” he hissed.

Telford put a hand on his shoulder. Rush froze, but didn’t move away.

“Nick,” Telford said in a low, even voice. “Calm down. I’m sure we can work out a compromise.”

The bitch of it was, Rush did seem to calm down. He shot Telford a scathing look, but sank back into his seat. Telford’s hand stayed on his shoulder. Young couldn’t seem to take his eyes away from it.

“You yourself acknowledge,” Telford said to Young in a sensible tone, “that Rush’s physical and mental wellbeing are important to the ship. There’s a tactical issue here. We want to make sure he’s functioning optimally. But we also can’t pretend that it makes sense to simply remove him from the equation. He has to be involved in certain projects.”

“And what would you suggest?” Young said, aware he sounded hostile and not giving a damn about it.

Telford shrugged. “Limit him to non-strenuous activity if you want. Attending briefings. Sitting at his computer. Eight hours seems reasonable.”

“Eight hours is not reasonable,” Young said. “He’s exhausted.”

“You’re not his babysitter, Everett,” Telford said mildly.

“Neither are you.”

Rush finally shoved Telford’s hand off of him at that. “I’m sitting _right here_ ,” he said again, trying for angry and only managing to sound agonized. “Fuck you. Fuck both of you. I don’t need your fucking protection.”

“Nick—“ Telford began.

He was cut off by a crackle from the ship’s intercom system.

“Hear ye, hear ye,” Greer’s voice said, slightly staticky, but unmistakably exuberant. “Let it be known to all citizens of the good ship Destiny that Lieutenant Matthew Scott has finally got his damn act together and asked Miss Chloe Armstrong to marry him. And she said yes. So we’re going to celebrate by having a big old party in the mess tomorrow night, assuming Colonel Young’s not a killjoy about it. Um. Colonel Young, if you’re listening— sorry. Yeah. So come congratulate the happy couple, or, you know, rag on them, especially since it took so—“ There was the sound of a brief tussle. “Sorry, everybody,” Scott’s voice said, sounding out of breath. “Sorry for the interruption; this is _not_ part of Sergeant Greer’s official duties.” In the background, Greer could be heard laughing and saying, “Give me the mic back! Scott!” “And, uh,” Scott concluded, “Have a good night, I guess? Sorry! Sorry again, everybody!”

The transmission clicked off.

There was a brief silence.

Somehow the uncomplicated joy of the announcement had highlighted the ugliness of their conversation. Rush had closed his eyes, and was clutching his laptop, looking faintly desolate.

“I’m leaving,” he said quietly after a moment. “I assume that neither of you will object, since everyone appears to be so _fucking_ concerned about my optimal functioning.”

He strode out of the room.

Young shot Telford a deeply unpleasant look and followed him.

It didn’t take him long to catch up. The pulse of the corridor lighting made Rush easy to follow, and he was still walking with a pronounced limp.

“I’m not in the mood,” Rush said tightly when Young got near, refusing to so much as turn his head.

Young fell into step beside him. “Not in the mood for what?”

“Talking to you.”

“Well, I wasn’t really in the mood to have to go toe-to-toe with Telford, but—“

“Then why couldn’t you keep your fucking distance? No one wanted you there.”

“I’m trying to keep you _alive_ ,” Young said, a little stung. “You know that, right?”

Rush made a contemptuous gesture. “I’m sure it’s very enjoyable imagining yourself as the center of your own melodrama, but David’s right. It’s not going to kill me to sit in a room.”

“How would you know?” Young said shortly.

“You already played that card, earlier. It didn’t impress David, and it’s certainly not going to impress me. Don’t pretend like you’re privy to some sort of secret fucking knowledge. And furthermore,” Rush went on, bitterly, “I don’t appreciate you treating me like a place to plant your metaphorical flag in this childish battle to see who the bigger-dicked flyboy fascist is.”

“Oh, of course,” Young said, feeling irrationally furious. “You’re the one with all the secret fucking knowledge. How could I forget.”

“I don’t know. Perhaps _you’re_ the one who needs to be on _light duty_.”

“It’s literally never occurred to you, has it, that someone might pull the same stunt on you that you pull on everybody else? That someone else might be holding onto knowledge _you_ want?”

Rush said acerbically, “Very few people around me show signs of holding onto any knowledge at all.”

“You’d be surprised,” Young said. He didn’t really know why he was saying this, except that he was really fucking angry at Rush, and he couldn’t stop picturing Telford’s hand: the way it had rested casually and possessively on Rush’s shoulder. “There are things I know that you don’t. Things about you.”

“Oh, what? Let me guess: you read David’s diary and want to tell me all about it.” Rush turned towards him, faux-wide-eyed. “Should I be blushing? How much detail does he go into about what we got up to in bed?”

That was like a punch to the stomach, but Young refused to acknowledge it. The fact that it was such a low blow meant that Rush felt like he was a threat. “When you’re in the interface,” he said steadily, “you don’t form any memories. Have you ever wondered why that is?”

Abruptly the mockery dropped from Rush’s face, and he looked wary. “Tamara said—“

“She was wrong,” Young said. “But I know why. _I_ form memories. I talked to you during the Nakai attack. That version of you was… very forthcoming about your endgame.”

Rush paused in the middle of the hallway. “You’re lying,” he said guardedly. He searched Young’s face, his eyebrows drawn together. “That’s not true. This is a trick.”

“It’s not a trick.”

“What did I say to you?”

“Why should I tell you?” Young countered. “You never tell me anything.”

“Because I’m trying to—“ Rush broke off and turned away, raking an unusually anxious hand through his hair. “Fuck,” he said, and leaned a hand against the bulkhead. “Fuck.”

“And as for what is or isn’t going to kill you, or— fine, let’s take the _melodrama_ down a notch— just fuck you up beyond recognition, forgive me if I don’t exactly trust you to know that, when most of the time you don’t have the faintest idea of what’s going on in your own head.”

Rush’s head jerked up defensively. “That’s not true.”

“You haven’t asked about how I fixed our connection,” Young said. “But I _didn’t_ fix our connection. There was never anything wrong with our connection. The damage was always in your head. You didn’t know. You couldn’t see it. Just like you can’t see any of the other fucked-up shit that’s buried in there, how badly that computer virus tore you up, or being firewalled and rebooted— you must have known, because you kept trying to kick me out, but Jesus—“ He couldn’t keep the pain out of his voice. “When I looked inside your head, there was barely a _you_ left!”

Rush’s face had gone expressionless.

“The only reason we couldn’t separate was that you were damaged. I didn’t realize till I saw the whole—“ Young gestured— “shape of your mind.”

“You _can’t_ see it,” Rush said. But his certainty had clearly been shaken. “You can’t see into Destiny, so you can’t possibly see— You’re wrong.”

“I can,” Young said intensely. “I can see it. Sometimes. Think about it. When you were living off the energy from the ship, it fixed us. That never really made sense. _I_ wasn’t doing anything different. But you— you were doped up. It boosted your tolerance to pain, hunger, cold, exhaustion… It fixed _you_. It didn’t fix us. And then _I_ fixed you. For good.”

Rush was looking down. He’d backed himself against the bulkhead. “When,” he said flatly.

“What?”

“ _When_. When did you fix it; when did you _fucking_ fix it.”

Young stood there for a moment, unable to make himself answer. He hadn’t meant to go this far. “When we—“ he said at last, reluctantly.

Rush drew a slow breath and then glanced away with a twisted, painful half-smile. “Ah. I suppose that answers some questions. And then, in the infirmary—“

Young was silent again. Finally, he said, “I was trying to _help_ you. I wasn’t—“

Rush cut him off unsteadily. “ _Don’t.”_

“I didn’t _know_ that—“

“Oh, fuck you. You knew. You fucking _knew_.”

“Not the first time,” Young said helplessly. “And that wasn’t— It’s not like that was the reason I—“

He reached out to touch Rush’s shoulder. Rush slapped his hand away.

“That’s not _why_ ,” Young said desperately. “You know it’s not. You _know_ that.”

“According to you,” Rush said fixedly, wrapping his arms across his chest, “I know much less than I thought.”

Young stared at him, feeling like his heart was trying to climb up out of his throat. “It was an accident,” he whispered. “The first time. It felt like you wanted me there. Everything inside of you was so— when you’re in the ship, you _know_ me. Even when there’s no _you_ left, just— sort of— all the stuff that you’re made of. That you could be made of. Still. You always know me. You trust me. And everything inside of you was like that, and I just— wanted to— fuck, I don’t know, I just wanted to make you hurt less. Because I—“ He swallowed. “Because I want that.”

Rush wasn’t looking at him. He was staring down at the deck. “Tautology,” he said thinly, after a long time.

“What?”

“An argumentative flaw. _I want X because I want X.”_

“Then just— because,” Young said. His throat was tight. “I don’t— think I know why. I don’t think I can explain it to you. But it’s not— because I’m trying to screw you over, or _use_ you for something. It’s not about anything else. Just us.”

Rush exhaled raggedly at that. He still wasn’t looking at Young.

“Do you believe me?” Young asked quietly.

“Yes,” Rush whispered. He shut his eyes. “I don't know. Yes.”

Young reached out tentatively to tuck Rush’s hair behind his ear. Rush let him do it, then didn’t object when Young’s hand lingered, stroking softly at the side of his head.

“It’s not a good idea,” Rush said almost soundlessly.

“Why? Because you think you’re not going back to Earth? Maybe you’re right. Maybe you can’t. But in that case, I’m not going back either.”

“Yes, you _are_ ,” Rush breathed, sounding agonized.

“You don’t get to make that decision for me,” Young said softly. “I’m not a piece you can move around on a chessboard. I’m the one who gets to decide.”

Abruptly Rush pulled away from him, pacing a few steps and turning his back. “ _Why_ , anyway; _why_ ; why do you want this? Have you ever even bothered to think about that? You don’t like me; you’ve _never_ liked me. You left me on a fucking planet to die. And now you want— what? To be my _friend_? To _fuck_ me?” He spun, giving Young a challenging look.

Young shrugged.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Rush snapped.

“You already know the answers. I told you: I don’t know why. You want me to say it’s the link, but I don’t think it makes a difference. Either way— yes.” He stopped and had to take a long breath. “I want to— I want those things. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Rush echoed, narrowing his eyes as though he suspected some deception.

“When I see Telford touch you,” Young said in a low voice, “it drives me crazy. Which you know; I mean, I know you know, because you always— but that’s why, I guess. Because he— and because he still did what he did. And I want to, to— and I would never— I _wouldn’t_. Because I— _Because_.”

Rush was still watching him with that considering look.

Young spread his arms. “I don’t know what else you want from me. That’s it. That’s—“ He gave a cracked laugh. “That’s what I’ve got.”

For a moment, Rush turned away again. He folded his arms over his head, as though he were trying to protect himself from something heavy that was balanced precariously on a ledge, about to fall on him. “I can’t do this right now,” he said under his breath, almost to himself. He turned and glared at Young. “I can’t _do_ this right now,” he said again. There was something faintly panicked in his tone.

“Okay. Okay,” Young said, soothing. He stepped forward, bringing his hands to Rush’s arms.

“ _No_ ,” Rush said, giving him a sharp shove. “Don’t— do _not_ try to— _do_ anything to my _brain.”_

“I’m not!” Young said, backing away.

“I know you’re not,” Rush said. He was breathing fast. “Obviously. Obviously you’re not.” He stared at Young for a moment, then turned and took several steps down the hall.

“Where are you going?” Young asked, confused.

“To bed. _Alone_. We can talk about this _later_.”

Rush was heading towards his own quarters. He didn’t look back. Young watched him till a turn took him out of sight.

How long had it been since they’d slept in separate rooms?

He couldn’t remember.

* * *

Young slept terribly, waking at intervals through the night in a confused panic at the fact that Rush wasn’t there. He dreamed he was in the Taos cabin, sewing a blanket that seemed to be made out of himself. He kept pulling more and more of it out of his chest, and having to sew the hems by hand, which he didn’t know how to do, so he pricked his fingers and blood got all over it. He heard the boards of the porch creak from time to time, but no one knocked at the door, and he wasn’t sure whether the noise was just the wind.

When he woke at oh six hundred, Rush was already awake. Young had a surprisingly clear sense of him: a nervous, bleary presence choking down breakfast in the mess with Wray.

“Should you really be on duty?” Wray asked Rush skeptically. “You look terrible.”

Rush looked away abruptly. “I didn’t sleep well. We’re sweeping the ship for the Nakai tracking device, so I need to be there for the first hour, while the sensor calibration is being performed.”

“And then you’ll get some rest?”

Rush hunched his shoulders defensively. “As though you can talk. You’re supposed to be off duty for the next two days. What are you doing up at this hour?”

Wray looked down at her oatmeal. “I couldn’t sleep either,” she admitted. “I— haven’t been sleeping well since—“

Rush looked at her for a long time. “It does get better,” he said with surprising gentleness.

Wray nodded jerkily. “I know. I mean, I know it must.” She cleared her throat. “And what about you?”

“What about me what?”

“What’s keeping you up at night?”

“Oh, you know.” Rush glanced down. “This and that.”

Young withdrew from his head without Rush noticing he had been there. He wasn’t sure if he had learned anything from what Rush had said.

* * *

The day passed uneventfully. The sensor modification failed to turn up anything that was likely to be a Nakai tracking device, which sent the science team back to the drawing board. Young’s disappointment at the lack of results was, however, overset by the fact that the whole team (newly cowed) had combined forces to pressure Rush into keeping to his four-hour duty restriction. So that was something, he supposed.

At around nineteen hundred hours, he entered the mess to find most of the science team gearing up for the party. Brody and Volker were assembling some kind of sound system that (alarmingly) seemed to have microphones at the front. Young frowned at the machine, wondering if possibly there had been some unauthorized requisitions from Earth.

Rush was sitting near the front of the mess, staring intently at his laptop. He and Young hadn’t spoken, beyond the most limited official interactions, all day. They’d been trying to stay out of each other’s brains. Rush looked up as Young approached and paused slightly, but said nothing. He lowered his eyes back to his computer screen.

//You’re supposed to be off-duty,// Young ventured.

//I am. This is unmistakably non-essential.//

Young leaned against Rush’s table and picked up the tin cup next to him. “Starting a little early?”

“It’s water,” Rush said absently.

Young frowned at him and took a sip.

“Oh, what?” Rush said with faint amusement. “You didn’t _believe_ me?”

“Call it the benefit of experience,” Young said.

“Rush!” Eli called from across the room. “Are you done with that program yet?”

“I _would be_ if people would stop _interrupting me_ ,” Rush said with asperity.

Young turned his attention to Scott and Greer, who seemed to be rigging up some kind of siphon-based system for dispensing alcohol. For dispensing… a significant quantity of alcohol.

“Brody,” Young said, frowning, “how much of this stuff do you actually have?”

“Um… a lot?” Brody said guardedly.

“Kind of an embarrassing amount, actually,” Volker said thoughtfully. “Considering that we could have used that grain for food.”

“We couldn’t have stored it for an extended period of time,” Brody defended. “It would’ve gone bad.”

Scott and Greer were attempting to lift what appeared to be—

“Are those gasoline cans?” Young said incredulously. “Are you storing liquor in _gasoline cans?_ ”

“We washed them,” Greer assured him.

“We washed them _really well_ ,” Scott said earnestly. “With soap.”

“Why do we _have_ gasoline cans?” Young asked.

“They’re for the MALP,” Scott said.

“But we don’t have a MALP. We’ve never had a MALP.”

“That’s why we don’t have gasoline in the gasoline cans,” Greer said.

Young said warily, “So what did you do with the gasoline?”

“We gave it to Rush,” Greer said.

“That seems only marginally more responsible than lighting it on fire for fun,” Young said. He turned to Rush. “And what did _you_ do with it?”

“I lit it on fire,” Rush murmured, frowning at his computer. “For fun.”

Young gave him a hard look.

“Actually, sir, he stored it in an airtight container that he flooded with nitrogen gas to prevent flash-fires,” Scott said.

//Were you _baiting_ me?// Young asked.

//Mm,// Rush said noncommittally.

//What were you planning to do if you caught me?//

Rush’s eyes flicked up to Young, a brief but unmistakably searing gaze. //I don’t think we ever decided,// he said, //what the preferable option was.//

Young said, //I’m pretty sure I said that it depends on what the fisherman wants with the fish.//

//Yes. I do seem to recall you saying that.//

//And?//

Rush's mouth curved slightly, crookedly. //And what?//

// _Rush_ ,// Young said, caught on an edge of anticipation, just as—

“Rush!” Eli yelled, shattering the tense and over-charged air between them.

Rush made a noise of frustration. “Yes. It’s finished. You can come take a look.”

“I’m sure it’s fine. Just hook it up.”

“What do you mean,  _hook it up?_ " Rush said disdainfully.

“Stop pretending you don’t understand the concept of karaoke. It’s not that hard, and you’re a super genius. No one’s fooled.”

Young hid a smile as Rush, with an aggrieved expression, pulled a flash drive from his computer and limped over to Eli’s computer, plugged the flash drive in, and then knelt to open an access panel near the floor. He peered into the wall.

//What’s Eli got you doing?// Young asked.

//I’m interfacing his computer with the onboard sound system,// Rush said, sounding irritated. //Apparently at the last social event, there were complaints that the music was insufficiently loud. Eli _also,_ for reasons best known to himself, requested karaoke software from Earth, which I am also interfacing.//

//That seems awfully nice of you.//

//I’m going to exact compensation.// Rush was on his back, his head and shoulders inside the wall, peering up at a maze of wiring. He’d stripped off his jacket, and his thin t-shirt had ridden up a little, showing a strip of skin above the waist of his fatigues.

Eli, who was carrying a stack of cups across the room, slowed as he passed Young. “Uh, you’re staring,” he said quietly, before picking up his pace again.

* * *

By twenty-hundred hours, most of the crew had arrived at the party. The only people still missing were Chloe, Wray, and TJ— rumor had it that they were holed up somewhere, working on Chloe’s hair.

“Women,” Greer said, rolling his eyes as he handed Rush a cup of some kind of potent alcoholic punch. Park, standing next to him, smacked him on the arm. “ _Joking_ ,” he said hastily.

Rush said icily, “If Chloe wishes to have her hair done, then I’m sure there is some value in the endeavor. She’s an eminently reasonable person. I’d do it myself, if she asked.”

“Now _that_ ,” Greer said, looking amused, “I would pay to see.”

Rush scowled at him and downed half the cup of punch.

“Whoa, there, cowboy,” Young said mildly from beside him, stealing the cup out of his grasp. “You want to take it easy?”

“ _No_ ,” Rush said, glaring at him, and reached out to grab the cup.

Their fingers collided, just for a moment, and both of them froze. Rush’s breath stuttered. Then he was yanking the cup back, staring determinedly at the deck.

“I—“ he said, obviously trying to recover. “I would have preferred to have started drinking _hours_ ago, but _someone_ couldn’t get the siphons working.”

“You’d be unconscious,” Young said in the same effortfully ordinary tone. “You’re a fucking lightweight.”

“Incorrect,” Rush said shortly.

Young couldn’t seem to stop looking at him.

Greer rolled his eyes. “Well, I guess you’re going to need to be a little drunk, anyway,” he said to Rush, and wandered off to go join Scott, who was lighting up cigars with a group of jarheads. How the _hell_ had someone managed to sneak cigars on board? Young was going to have to talk to Wray about this whole _requisitions_ business.

“What did he mean by that?” Rush asked suspiciously, staring after Greer.

“No idea,” Young said. “Please don’t listen to him. I’d prefer that you _not_ get absolutely trashed.”

“And why’s that, then?” Rush glanced over at him, still wary.

Young shrugged carefully. “The night is young. You never know what might happen.”

Rush didn’t say anything. But he shifted just slightly, so that their shoulders brushed. Unexpectedly, Young felt the very tips of Rush’s fingers tangle with his for a brief instant. He inhaled, feeling like the sensitivity of his skin had suddenly been cranked up to unimaginable levels. He was aware of every hair on his arms, every rasp of military-issue nylon-cotton blend.

“Someone’s feeling awfully cocky,” Rush murmured.

“Optimistic, maybe,” Young said. He was struggling to catch his breath.

“Mm,” Rush said noncommittally, without looking at him.

The moment was interrupted by Greer letting loose with a shrill whistle. Chloe had entered the mess, pink-faced and smiling shyly. Her hair had been intricately twisted and pinned on top of her head, a few loose strands curled to fall forwards. She looked, Young thought, lovely, if a little overwhelmed in the face of so many loudly cheering people. She ducked her head and managed an awkward wave to the crowd before Scott showed up to rescue her and lead her away.

“All right!” Eli said into a microphone at the front of the room. “Now that Chloe’s here— Is this thing on?” He tapped the mic. It gave a long squeal of feedback, as though answering to his question. “Okay, it’s on. And so is this party! This party is _on!_ ”

General celebration from the crowd. The Destiny crew was a disturbingly party-loving bunch, and pretty indiscriminate about the cause or quality of the party in question.

“Chloe— Matt—“ Eli went on, “you guys are awesome. Awesome weirdos. I mean that as the highest praise. Thanks for giving us an excuse to get drunk and sing karaoke. Not that— I mean, it’s definitely not just an excuse. _But._ But! We’re definitely doing karaoke! Because I am a slick-ass mastermind, and had the good taste and foresight to get the software from Earth. You can thank me later. Sign up on the wall over there—“ he pointed to his left— “or, you know, sign your friends up. And then make sure they’re too drunk to remember afterwards.”

“You could still put a stop to this nonsense, you know,” Rush said to Young.

“And have Greer call me a killjoy?” Young stole his cup again and took a drink.

Rush huffed. “Keep it, why don’t you. I’m getting another.” He turned towards the drinks table.

Up in front, Eli said, “To kick things off, we’ve got our first volunteers, Volker and Brody, who are, um, doing “Immigrant Song,” I guess? So they claim. I want to emphasize that I am in _no way_ affiliated with this performance.”

Volker grabbed the mic from him, climbed onto the table, and waggled his eyebrows. “Yeah, you _wish_ you were affiliated with this performance.”

“I really don’t,” Eli said.

“Prepare to have your _mind blown_ ,” Volker said, leveling a finger at him.

“On second thought,” Young said wearily, “maybe getting called a killjoy is a small price to pay.”

“Too late,” Rush said, rejoining him.

Volker had launched into the falsetto opening of “Immigrant Song” with a frightening amount of enthusiasm. Brody, who’d climbed onto the table beside him, bent over his microphone with an intent look. “We come from the land of the ice and snow,” he said in his usual deadpan voice. “From the midnight sun where the hot springs blow.”

“They— definitely practiced this,” Young said to Rush, staring.

“Clearly they have too much free time on their hands,” Rush said grimly. “I’ll be putting an stop to that.”

“ _We are your overlords,_ ” Volker and Brody wailed, banging their heads in unison and executing some sort of dance move.

“I think I’m going to need another drink,” Young said.

* * *

“It’s just that everyone takes the hydroponics lab for _granted_ ,” Park said loudly and earnestly, placing an unsteady hand on Young’s shoulder. “And I get that. I do. It’s not _exciting_. No one blows things _up_ in the hydroponics lab. But it’s not just that it’s important for _food_ , which it _is_ , like, _really_ important. It’s that plants are living things _too_. We have to take _care_ of them. We have a _responsibility_. They’re lost in _space_ , just like _us_. Galactic _voyagers_.”

“Right,” Young said. “I see what you’re saying.”

“I _knew_ you would,” Park said. “I just _knew_.”

Young glanced over at Rush, who was leaning against the bulkhead. Rush wasn’t drunk, but he was enough of the way there that his mind had stopped being as brutally efficient as it usually was. The ceaseless churning-up of its contents had slowed, its exhausting motion turning almost soft-edged. One of the results was that Rush wasn’t having to fight off half-memories and flashbacks; they had sunk back into the silt of his brain. He felt muted, lightweight; relieved, at some level. This, Young thought, was why he’d wanted to drink.

//You could have told me,// Young said. //We could try to do something about the flashbacks. I could—//

Rush cut him off with a complicated wave of regret. //I need them.//

//You don’t _need_ them. They’re hurting you. Some of them aren’t even your own memories.//

//Those are the parts I need. The parts that aren’t mine. They’re Destiny’s memories, and I’m going to have to try to pull them forward.//

//That— doesn’t sound like a good idea,// Young said uneasily.

Rush smiled faintly staring down into his cup. //Good isn’t always the same thing as pleasant. Perhaps you can fix me after I do it.//

//Rush—// Young didn’t know what to say to that. He ended up sending some tangled mass of what he was feeling: fear, confusion, concern, desire.

Rush flinched and looked away.

“You’re talking to him, aren’t you?” Park said.

Young realized he’d been staring at Rush for almost a minute. He jerked his head back. “Um, yeah. Sorry,” he said.

“It’s okay,” Park said easily. “I get it. It’s like plants. They grow where they want to. They’re not really deterministic.”

“Right,” Young said. He had no idea what she was talking about. “Exactly like plants.”

* * *

Telford made his appearance about halfway through the party, sidling up to Rush and resting an arm against the wall. “Nick,” he said conversationally.

“David,” Rush said, narrowing his eyes at him.

Young, who’d been absentmindedly keeping tabs on Rush while congratulating TJ on her memorable rendition of “Livin’ on a Prayer,” twitched and said abruptly to TJ, “Excuse me for a minute.” TJ’s eyes followed his gaze to Telford and Rush, and she gave him a grim nod.

“You certainly seem to have recovered a great deal,” Telford was saying mildly. “You can’t work eight hours, but you can drink?”

“It’s no one else’s business what I do with my own goddamn body,” Rush said shortly. “Certainly not yours.”

“That’s not entirely true, though, is it?” Telford said.

Rush’s mouth tightened.

“We need to talk,” Telford said, lowering his voice. “About the—“

“Not here,” Rush said tersely, his eyes going to Young.

Young had pushed towards them through the crowd. “David,” he said evenly.

Telford gave him a long look. “It must get awfully irritating,” he said to Rush, “to have someone keeping tabs on you on 24/7.”

“That’s not what’s going on here,” Young said.

“No? Have I just been forbidden the royal presence? That’s not very nice,” he said, turning to Rush again, “considering that I _made_ you, Nick.” His voice had hardened, just slightly.

“Oh, fuck off,” Rush said, but without much asperity. “Can’t you ever, just once, have a normal conversation, without trying to turn it into one of your games?”

“That’s pretty rich, coming from you.”

“Well, we can’t _both_ be constantly gaming each other,” Rush said, smiling faintly. “We’d never manage to discuss anything.”

Telford returned the smile. “We had some very productive discussions last time.”

Rush looked down at his cup. “Those were very different circumstances,” he said quietly.

“Were they?” Telford asked neutrally.

“I’m afraid you’re breaking an unspoken Destiny regulation,” Young said with forced easiness. “No talking business at parties. I wouldn’t want to have to write you up.”

“We’re hardly talking business, Everett,” Telford said lazily, leaning against the wall and turning to Young. “Just reminiscing. Although I _did_ want to point out to you that, as I was telling Nick, we need to have a full briefing about this Nakai tracking device. Finding it is _imperative_.”

“I don’t disagree,” Young said levelly. “Tomorrow afternoon?”

“ _Early_ afternoon,” Telford said. His eyes were following Rush, who had slipped away from them and was speaking to Chloe.

Over at the karaoke table, Eli announced, “Okay, so our latest victim, I mean, volunteer is, um, Greer et al? I’m not really sure what that means? Greer, who’s your et al?”

Greer climbed up onto the table. “All right, hey, everybody—“ He frowned and tapped the microphone as the sound cut out. “What the hell, Eli?”

“Sorry!” Eli said. “There must be something wrong with the input! I can—“

“Rush!” Greer shouted. “Come help us out here!”

Rush rolled his eyes, but limped over to the table. Greer knelt down, microphone in hand.

//Um,// Young said, trying to hide a mental smile, //You might want to watch out; I think you’re about to get—//

Greer got a hold of Rush’s upper arm and dragged him up onto the table, helped out by the strategically positioned James and Barnes.

//Yeah,// Young said. //That.//

Rush scowled ferociously. “ _No_ ,” he said, emphatically.

“Yup,” Greer said cheerfully, over a wave of laughter and cheering from the room. “It’s happening. Where’s that second microphone?”

“I refuse,” Rush said, as Eli passed the second microphone over. “I was brought here under false pretenses. You are an irredeemably deceitful man.” He tried to wrestle free of Greer and escape, but Greer had a good grip on his bicep.

Greer pointed down at the surrounding crowd. “Do _not_ let him leave this table.”

More laughter and cheering. Young could see Chloe up near the front, her eyes crinkled with amusement and her hands clasped together. She was one of the ones cheering. Even Wray was suppressing a smile, and Eli was absolutely red-faced with hilarity.

“I don’t know any songs,” Rush said, sullen.

//You can’t back out now,// Young said. //You’ll break Chloe’s heart. Think of this as your engagement present.//

//I made a fucking ring for her!//

//Yeah, but memories last forever.//

//That’s what I’m afraid of.//

“Consider this my contribution to the increase-the-cultural-literacy-of-Nicholas-Rush campaign,” Greer said. “Anyway, I’m reliably assured that all English people know this band.”

“I’m not _fucking_ English!” Rush snapped, glaring at him.

“Whatever,” Greer said, unconcerned. “I would like to dedicate my performance of this song to Dr. Lisa Park. Love you, babe.” He blew Park a kiss.

“It better be good!” Park yelled from the audience.

Greer continued, “And I would like to dedicate _his_ performance of this song—“ he pointed to Rush— “to Dr. Dale Volker.”

“ _What.”_ The intensity of Rush’s glare, amazingly, increased.

Greer pointed at Volker. “You deserve it.”

“It better be _really_ good!” Volker yelled.

“So this little ditty we’re going to be performing is by a band called the Pogues.” Greer pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Rush. “See how nice I am? I wrote down the lyrics for you.”

“Fuck right off,” Rush said, but he pulled out his glasses and put them on, frowning at the paper.

“You ready?” Greer asked him.

Rush made a rude gesture.

“All right, then. Eli— fire it up!”

A burst of what sounded like accordion, drums, and some kind of banjo started playing over Destiny’s sound system.

“I fucking despise you,” Rush said wearily into the microphone.

“I know,” Greer said tolerantly, and got an arm around his shoulders.

 _If I should fall from grace with God_  
_Where no doctor can relieve me_  
_If I’m buried ‘neath the sod_  
_But the angels won’t receive me_  
_Let me go, boys_  
_Let me go, boys…_

Rush picked up the tune quickly, and his reluctant, sulky singing voice actually suited the song pretty well. Greer did backup vocals on the chorus and pretended to be conducting the performance. He was clearly having the time of his life. Young grinned.

After a moment, in his peripheral vision, he became aware of a familiar silhouette. He turned his head slightly to see the AI standing there. It looked like Sheppard, slouching against the wall. It gave him an uncertain, quirking smile, tentative and apologetic, before it turned back to Rush and Greer.

 _Bury me at sea_  
_Where no murdered ghost can haunt me_  
_If I rock upon the waves_  
_Then no corpse can lie upon me_  
_It’s coming up threes, boys_  
_Keeps coming up threes, boys…_

“He has a nice voice,” the AI said quietly.

“Yeah,” Young said. He was reluctant to say more; he didn’t want to look like he was talking to thin air.

The AI said, “I like listening to him sing.”

Young glanced over at it. It had a wistful expression. It was mimicking him, he realized: his pose, the fold of his arms across his chest, the exact angle of his lean. As though it didn’t know how it was supposed to stand. That should have seemed creepy, but it just made him feel sad, somehow. There was something in its face as it watched Rush that was hard to look at.

“Yeah,” he said once more, softly.

 _Let me go, boys_  
_Let me go, boys_  
_Let me go down in the mud_  
_Where the rivers all run dry_

When he looked over again, the AI had gone.

The song was pretty short, and soon it had rattled to a close with a final flourish of accordion and strings. There was catcalling and applause before the echoes had even faded.

“I hope you enjoyed that, Volker,” Rush said dryly, climbing down off the table and handing the microphone to Eli.

“Acceptable!” Volker yelled from the back of the crowd.

“We have been blessed with an historic event,” Eli said into the mic. “Truly, let us give thanks to Greer, for we shall not see its like again.”

“No, they shan’t,” Rush said shortly, when he’d reached Young’s side. “Because I’m going to murder them if they try.”

“You were great,” Young said, and risked tousling his hair.

Rush scowled at him. “Don’t touch—“ he began, and stopped, looking indecisive.

Young’s hand had come to rest lightly at the back of his neck.

“Rethinking that prohibition?” Young asked mildly. He let his fingertips stray just slightly underneath the collar of Rush’s shirt.

Rush shivered. The barest hint of a flush colored his cheekbones. He darted an unreadable glance at Young. “Ask me later,” he said, not-quite-steadily.

“I will,” Young said. He drew his hand slowly back.

* * *

“God _damn_ ,” Greer said quietly. “You leave them alone for three minutes, and they find each other.”

“And not by accident, either,” Young said grimly.

They were looking at Telford and Rush, who were sitting, heads bent close together, at a table near the back of the mess. The table was too far away for Young to hear what they were saying, so he shoved his mind into apposition with Rush, not bothering to be particularly discreet about it. Rush sent him a distracted wave of acknowledgement.

“—mention it at the next joint briefing,” Rush was saying. “It’s a perfectly feasible—“

“You don’t want to just try it?” Telford asked. “Even a few hours could make a significant difference, and we don’t know the timeframe we’re dealing with.”

//Try _what?_ // Young asked.

//Nothing,// Rush said absently. //I’m dealing with it.//

//That does _not_ reassure me.//

“Besides,” Telford said, “even leaving aside the urgency of the situation, I can’t imagine you’re not curious about the research opportunities. Not the Nick I know. You’ve always been… curious.”

Rush’s eyes had drifted to follow Chloe as she climbed up onto the karaoke table. “We’ll talk about it later,” he said.

Next to Young, Greer said, “You want me to go get him?”

But Young had already started purposefully towards Telford and Rush.

He didn’t recognize the music that had started playing— something with bells and piano, a slow-tempo’d ballad that suited the strange, late, and drunken mood. The crowd in the mess had thinned out a little, leaving behind the ghosts of their exuberance and a sharp, cloying scent of alcohol and punch,. Young didn’t have to work hard to move through the room.

“This is my favorite song,” Chloe said over the microphone. She was flushed and smiling down at someone sitting right beside the table, probably Scott. “But I’m not that great a singer. But I’m going to try to— Okay. Okay.” She began to sing in a tentative but steady voice.

 _Come sail your ships around me,_  
_And burn your bridges down._  
_We make a little history, baby,_  
_Every time you come around._

In the back of Young’s mind, he was still following Rush’s conversation.

“You want me to think— what,” Telford said, “that you’ve _changed?_ Well, you _have_ changed. _I_ changed you. But in all the best ways, as it turns out.” Very casually, he draped his arm over Rush’s back and dropped a hand on his shoulder. “You can’t disagree with that. You won’t. I _know_ you.”

“You _knew_ me,” Rush said very quietly.

“In every way that matters, I still know you. You haven’t changed that much. Not really.”

Rush stared at the table. “Well,” he said, “I agree with you there.”

“So stop feeding me this line of bullshit and—“ Telford broke off as Young approached them.

“Excuse me,” Young said, from between clenched teeth. “I need to borrow Rush.”

Telford looked annoyed. He didn’t move his hand. “What an interesting turn of phrase,” he said. “Like a library book? Are you planning to return him?”

But Rush stood, forcing Telford to let his arm drop. “David,” he said, with a curt nod. He followed Young away from the table. //Feeling threatened?// he asked archly.

Young was too angry to talk to him. He was also a little drunker than he wished he was, and not nearly as drunk as he needed to be. His instinct was to grab Rush by the arm and drag him out of the mess; he imagined doing it, and it was satisfying: digging his fingers into Rush’s bicep, just flinging him up against a corridor wall and—

//I can’t tell if you want to hit me,// Rush commented, //or—//

//Shut the fuck up,// Young said tightly. He didn’t _need_ to drag Rush out of the mess. Rush was being strangely docile, willingly trailing him as they traded the brightly lit room for the darkened, empty hall. The hall should have been silent, but music, heavy with synths and piano, echoed out over the intercom. Chloe’s ghostly voice whispered above it:

 _We talk about it all night long_  
_We define our moral ground._  
_But when I crawl into your arms,_  
_Everything comes tumbling down._  
_Come sail your ships around me…_

It was only there, in the hallway, that Young gave into the need to touch Rush: getting a hard grip on both of his shoulders and forcing him back against a conference room door.

“What the _fuck_ ,” he said, in a low, furious voice, “what the _fuck_ was that?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Rush said, looking up at him through his lashes with a very faint, mean trace of a smile.

“Don’t fucking play games with me!”

“Isn’t that exactly what we’re doing here? Playing a game?” Rush tilted his chin up a little, defensively. His eyes were hard. “A sport, at the very least. The fisherman and the fish, who wins and who loses, who gets the hook run through them and who gets to eat—“

“ _No_ ,” Young said intensely. “That is not what we’re _fucking_ doing; that is not how this _fucking_ works—“

“Well, whatever game we’re playing, can we play it somewhere other than the fucking _hallway?_ ”

Abruptly the door slid open behind them, and, overbalancing slightly, they stumbled through. Young kept his grip on Rush’s arms, and managed to twist him, maneuvering him around and shoving him roughly against the shadowy wall.

Rush laughed breathlessly. “There’s no need to be so _aggressive_ ,” he said. “You’ve already got what you want. I thought I’d made that clear. I don’t know what it is with you military types; or is it just the Air Force? Give you an inch and you get so _grabby,_ it’s—“

Young physically covered his mouth with a hand. “ _Stop_ ,” he said forcefully. He had meant to sound angry, but his voice cracked. “Can you just not even stop for one _fucking_ second; are you just—fucking _incapable_ of not sticking a knife in anyone who wants to—“

Rush tried to speak, and made a frustrated sound. Young reluctantly shifted his hand.

“Wants to _what?_ ” Rush said, breathing hard. “What do you _want?_ Go ahead. I told you. You’ve already won. You want to kiss me? You want to take my clothes off? Come on. You want to fuck with my brain?” He brought his hands to where Young’s own hands were holding him, got a grip on them, and dragged them up to his head. “Come on,” he murmured again, staring at Young with that edgy ghost of a smile. “Go ahead.”

Young felt like he was being disemboweled. He tore his hands away. “How can you—“ he choked out. “That’s not—“

“ _Why not?_ ” Rush demanded, the words sounding ripped out of him. Almost at once he looked away, his lips pressed into a thin line, as though he hadn’t meant to say it.

“Because it’s not a game,” Young whispered, agonized. “It’s not a game. It never has been. You know that.”

Rush stared at him. His face went through a number of expressions; he seemed to be reaching desperately for something cold and neutral, and never quite managing to get there. He looked down, finally, and took a breath; then looked back up. He still hadn’t found the expression he wanted. There was something naked and slightly frightened about him.

Young understood the feeling.

“Nick,” he said, and took Rush’s face in his hands gently. “Let me take you to bed.”

Rush closed his eyes. After a moment, he turned his head into Young’s left hand, letting it rest there for a while. Then he stumbled forward slightly and pressed his lips to Young’s: not even kissing him at first, really, or at least it wasn’t sexual, and then it _was_ sexual, because their mouths came open, and they _were_ really kissing, _really_ , just going for it, groping together with so much clumsy fervor that their teeth clashed. Neither one of them was particularly good at this, and they both wanted it too much, but that just made it hotter, knowing that there was no artistry to it— just greediness, tangling fists in each other’s hair to get closer, and Rush making the little _mm_ noises that he tended to make, noises that made him sound starved, which was how he kissed, too, frantic, like he was starving, which Young found sad and endearing, but which he also liked on an animal level; _yes_ , he thought, _I want you to be starving for me._

He _wanted_ Rush. He had known he wanted Rush, but he hadn’t let himself know how much; or maybe he was only capable of realizing it now that he had Rush against him, here, in this darkened room. He wanted Rush so much that his hands were trembling as he pushed Rush’s shirt up, not because he was scared, although maybe he was, but because of the sheer intensity of how much he wanted to get those hands on skin he’d never touched. He wanted to get his _mouth_ on skin that he’d never _tasted_ — Rush wasn’t the only one who was starving— so he gave up sucking on Rush’s lower lip and shifted abruptly to suck at the corner of his jaw instead. Rush made a bitten-off noise and staggered back against the wall. He said unsteadily, “I’m— yes, but—“

“What?” Young murmured against that damp patch of skin, tonguing it with absent fascination, which didn’t seem to help Rush get the sentence out.

“Bed, you said— bed, but we could— “ He swallowed, fisting a hand in Young’s jacket as Young nudged at his throat, encouraging him to tip his head back. “We could— stay here,” he finished.

“Yes. Good idea,” Young said. “Here is— there’s a—“ He was distracted by the project of trying to drag the collar of Rush’s t-shirt down to expose a stretch of collarbone he wanted to kiss, and then he decided to drag it a little bit further, trying to get at more of Rush’s narrow, intoxicatingly masculine chest, tantalized by the dark hint of a nipple, and he kept expecting Rush to say something infuriatingly Rush-like, like, _You seem to be working contra to the design of the garment_ , or, _Are you unfamiliar with the t-shirt’s mechanical plan?_ But Rush didn’t. Rush had his hands threaded through Young’s hair and was just sort of— hanging on, his breath coming and going harshly, and when Young yanked the t-shirt so hard there was a distinct sound of thread ripping and managed to swipe his tongue across that nipple, Rush not only went tense but pushed up onto his toes with a gasp, which made Young breathe out a laugh.

“Oh, fuck you,” Rush said thickly. “You didn’t even— you didn’t even finish your fucking sentence.”

“There’s an afterparty at my place,” Young said, releasing his shirt to crowd him up against the wall and kiss him again. “And— a floor. Here. There’s a floor.”

“There is a floor,” Rush agreed breathlessly. “Well— _mm—_ well-spotted. Why is there an afterparty…?” He got his hands under Young’s jacket and raked his nails up Young’s back, causing all the air to suddenly rush out of Young’s body, so that he said dizzy-headed, “Because I’m an idiot. Oh, _fuck_ , Nick, I want to—“ But he didn’t know what he wanted to do, so he just kissed Rush with a renewed ferocity that made him feel like he was trying to devour something. In the back of his head, he was aware of a burst of ragged, nervous desire, as Rush failed to suppress his consciousness, or, no— Rush wasn’t _able_ to suppress his consciousness, because—

Panting, Young forced himself to drop his forehead to Rush’s shoulder. “Your mind is about to—“ he managed. “To let me in; I can— I won’t _do_ anything, I swear, I swear—“

Rush laid a feather-light hand against the back of his neck. “Shut up,” he whispered, his voice raw. “Why aren’t we on the fucking floor already?”

So Young dropped unsteadily to his knees, because he’d already slipped that lock open, and there was no returning. In his mind, it was as though all the tangling threads of Rush had reached out and enknotted him in their bright, rich, anxious, endlessly yearning, unfolding bursts. He pressed his lips just above Rush’s waistline, maybe a little bit dazed with so much sensation, tasting the skin there and bringing his hand up so he could feel the shape of where Rush was hard against his palm. Young had never even thought about whether he’d find that hot; it was such an ordinary, trivial thing, but he _did_ ; he was shamefully aroused by Rush’s arousal, by the feeling or even just the fact of Rush being hard, the physical proof that Rush _wanted_ him, that Rush wanted him so much that he couldn’t control it, couldn’t think his way out or over or around. He kept his hand there for a minute, encouraging Rush to stutter his hips against it, and then replaced it with his mouth, sucking wetly at the rough fabric of Rush’s BDUs, which made Rush’s fingers scrabble helplessly against the wall.

“Un—“ Rush choked out. “Unacceptable,” and before Young could figure out what he was talking about, Rush was basically tackling him to the floor, getting knees on either sides of his hips and trying to grind down against him as he fumbled with shaky hands at the buttons of Young’s jacket. “You’re not even– _on duty_ ,” Rush said, frustrated; “these— fucking _buttons_ ,” and in the end, Young had to undo them himself, because he was pretty sure Rush was about to rip them open. “Do _not_ ,” Young said, “destroy my uniform,” to which Rush, out of breath, said, “Then don’t fucking—“

But he was occupied in trying to pull Young’s shirt off, and lost the thread of what he was going to say. The weather of his mind was a chaotic mass of nebulae shifting in fast, ferocious motion, each cloud a new searing color of hunger or electricity or lust or whatever emotion it was that Young caused when he touched him, which he couldn’t stop doing; he couldn’t stop groping at every inch of Rush with feverish hands. And his hands must have _felt_ feverish to Rush, who was always cold, because he said, sounding almost drugged, “You’re so _warm_ ; fuck, you feel—“

Young felt ungainly, about sixteen years old again; still, he knew what he wanted, which was more than he’d known when he was sixteen, and _God_ he knew, _God,_ he felt like his skin itself was a sexual organ, and he dragged Rush down against him while still trying to get Rush’s shirt over his head, just to experience skin against bare skin, then, when he’d managed to fling the shirt into a corner, to kiss Rush as they rocked against each other— even more messily and fervently than before.. “I want—“ Young gasped against Rush’s lips— “I want to—“ He projected a disjointed flood of all the things he could imagine wanting— vague half-ideas of getting his mouth on Rush, fucking Rush, making him shake, making him really _want_ it, coming on his bare exposed skin; and Rush squirmed frantically against him and said in a ragged voice, “Don’t, don’t; stop, you’re going to make me—“

“Yeah?” Young breathed, ducking his head to nuzzle at Rush’s throat. “ _Yeah,_ fuck, _that’s_ what I want, _fuck_ , I want that—“ He hadn’t known. God, he was so fucking stupid; he hadn’t even known how to _want—_ But he knew now, and he wrestled eagerly with Rush’s fly, getting it open; he started to lick a stripe across his palm, but Rush got ahold of his wrist and jerked Young’s hand to his own mouth and, with a look that wanted to be arch but instead just _burned_ , proceeded to fucking _fellate Young’s fingers_ , dipping his head to slide them in and out of his hot, wet mouth, which punched a noise out of Young he didn’t think he’d ever previously made in his life, some sort of primal expression of pure lust. “Fuck,” he said hoarsely. “Is this— is this some kind of revenge for—“

“Dear diary,” Rush murmured with a hint of a smile, “today Colonel Young was very— m— _mean_ to— ah, _ah!”_

Young had gotten his hand into Rush’s pants. “I think I’m being awfully nice to you,” he said. “And I’m pretty sure at this point, you should use my first name.”

Rush squeezed his eyes shut and pushed unsteadily into Young’s fist. “Everett,” he whispered. The word sounded scraped out of his throat. It had an unexpected effect on Young; he couldn’t control the way it made his hips jerk upwards. Rush’s lips curved slightly at that. “You like that,” he said. “Everett. Do you want me to say it again?”

Young dragged him down to steal a rough kiss from him. “You think you’re so fucking clever,” he said. “Don’t you. Nick.”

“Did I say you could—“ Rush’s breath caught as Young sped up his hand. “Oh, fuck,” he said helplessly. “ _Oh_ —“ He let his head drop to Young’s shoulder for a moment. Young could feel his whole body shuddering, not with cold but with a kind of uncontainable pleasure that was also leaking out of his head, like sparks jumping from a fire that had been embers and was now, unexpectedly, getting overfed. The sparks were contagious, like sparks tended to be, and Young had to clench his teeth, because it felt like _he_ was the one getting touched, like he was the one whose circuit-board nerves were jolting with electricity, like he was the one trying desperately to swallow back the noises that wanting-too-much malletted out of him, like he was a piano string being struck over and over, quivering with the sound of his mounting release, and Young said intensely, “No, don’t, I want to hear you, _fuck_ — fuck—“ and fumbled urgently at the fly of his own BDUs, his hand colliding with Rush’s, because they were thinking the same thing, they were in and out of sync, and they were— laughing breathlessly as they tried to figure out which hands were whose, who could touch who, where those hands could fit, hands wrapped around each other, thrusting, slippery, the bare skin of bellies, _so_ good, Rush making the noises that Young had wanted to hear, almost-hurt noises that Young couldn’t not kiss him in return for, hard ferocious clumsy kisses, and he could taste blood on Rush’s lip, and for a moment he was afraid— but that was _good_ , that was— he _wanted_ it, he wanted to _feel_ it, and in fact he made a noise at that, and he was _so_ close, _they_ were close, because they were _close_ , and it was _so good_ that they were uncoordinated with it and barely able to even kiss; it was more like Rush was gasping into Young’s shoulder and Young was mouthing vaguely at Rush’s neck, and they were dragging and pushing and hard and wet and the sting of teeth and _so good_ , _so close_ , but not so close that Rush couldn’t say raggedly, right at the end, “You can, you can— I want you to—” and close enough that Young knew what he meant, and he almost couldn’t, he almost couldn’t even manage to get the word out, but he drew an uneven breath and whispered, "Nick," against Rush’s vulnerable pulse point; “Nick. Nick.”

* * *

Afterwards, they lay for a long time without speaking, just getting their breath back and being entirely separate people again.

Rush was draped over Young’s chest, resting his head just above Young’s collarbone. He was warm, for once, and soft, his mind quiescent and tranquil, with a drowsy and almost purring quality to it. Young smiled at the thought, and stroked his shoulder absently, trailing lazy fingers down his back.

“Laughing at me,” Rush accused indistinctly, without moving.

“No,” Young said quietly. “I like you like this.”

“Mm.” Rush reached up and somewhat sleepily wound his fingers into Young’s hair.

“Let’s skip the afterparty and just go back to your place.”

Rush’s thoughts sharpened minutely at that. “No,” he said warily. “My place is private.”

Young rolled his eyes. “Does literally everything have to be a secret with you?”

“Yes. Everything.”

“Fine. But you’ll come back to my place, right?”

There was a slight pause. “Yes,” Rush said.

“Good,” Young murmured. "That's good." He flattened his palm against the soft musculature of Rush’s lower back. Rush made a sighing sound of contentment and relaxed again. Young let his fingers drift and pick out the individual points of Rush’s spine, imagining them like a warm set of piano keys that hummed under his touch. That thought made him smile again, although he didn’t know why, and he sent some vague sense of it to Rush.

Minutes passed. Rush whispered, “I don’t want to move.” The thought seemed to overlay some private anguish: a well of melancholy that his mind’s surface only hinted at, the contents of which were inaccessible to Young.

Young brought a hand up to cradle the back of his head. “You don’t have to,” he said softly. “We’ve still got some time.”

“Yes,” Rush said almost soundlessly. “We’ve still got some time.”

It really wasn’t, strictly speaking, a very comfortable position they were in: half-naked, their pants shoved haphazardly down, sweaty, sticky, and stretched out on the bare deck of a conference room. But Young understood the sentiment, even on a purely strategic level. Once you left a certain configuration, there was no guarantee that you could ever get back to it. What if this was your only chance, the best you got? _Don’t move_ , something basic and animal in him screamed. _Stay here a little longer._ So he did, combing fingers through Rush’s hair as Rush half-dozed against him, neither of them thinking about much, just soaking in the nearness of each other’s bodies until at last the getting-up could not be postponed and Young, full of regret, shook Rush’s shoulder.

“Come on, genius,” he said gently. “It’s time to go.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rush and Greer perform the Pogues' ["If I Should Fall From Grace With God."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4v6aNjGFFk)
> 
> Chloe performs Nick Cave's ["Ship Song."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4VWKbZkIcM)


	40. White Picket Fence

Everett— and TJ knows she shouldn’t think of him as _Everett_ , this man who was so briefly her lover and almost the father of her child, that thinking of him as _Colonel Young_ will help her take all the things she shouldn’t know about him and pack them up as though returning them to the private box of his heart, but she can never quite do it, there’s always a half-second lapse between instinct and correction— had offered to host an afterparty for the senior staff, mostly, TJ thinks, in an attempt to prove that he isn’t a killjoy. When he and Rush had disappeared towards the end of the party, she’d assumed that they were headed back to his quarters. Not that she could easily imagine Rush at an afterparty, but for all practical purposes he’s living with Everett now. She wonders if they’ve realized this. It seems all too imaginable that they’ve somehow managed to avoid ever thinking about it. If you looked in the dictionary under _denial_ , you’d find a picture of Everett: solid, sturdy, set-jawed, and with a confused expression on his face. As for Rush— he seems to operate within some elaborate system of knowing and unknowing, compartmentalizing things into tiny computer byte-sized bits and locking them up in different parts of his brain, to be accessed only as needed. _Men_ , TJ thinks, because women don’t have the privilege of plowing through life in this blithely oblivious manner. Although she’d be hard-pressed to describe either Rush or Everett as blithe these days.

What they are is absent from Everett’s quarters when she gets there, and still absent for a good while afterwards.

“Are we absolutely sure they haven’t killed each other?” Varro says.

“Or Colonel Telford,” Greer says darkly, because Greer is there by that point, along with Park, Chloe, Scott,and Eli. “They’re probably hiding the body. I told the Colonel I’d cover for him if, you know, he wants to take advantage of that offer one of these days.”

“I’m sure nobody’s killed anyone else,” TJ says. “They’d at least wait till after the party.”

She can imagine a much simpler reason for their absence. And when they do show up, well into the swing of things, it’s immediately apparent she was right— so apparent that she has to resist the temptation to groan and bury her head in her hands.

Predictably, Everett looks every inch the acceptable soldier, as he does in almost any situation. It’s Rush whose shirt is inside-out and ripped at the collar, whose hair is a rumpled, flyaway mess, and who’s acquired a very telling bruise at his jawline. Even beyond all that, he just looks… tumbled. TJ suspects he’s one of those people who can’t ever hide it. His expression is somehow faintly stunned. A hit-by-a-train expression, TJ thinks, much to her own amusement, where the train is the full-steam-ahead locomotive that is Everett Young. She’s not unfamiliar with that particular problem.

“Um,” Varro begins beside her, as he eyes them.

They’re trying to sneak in quietly, but they seem to also be significantly drunker than they were when they left the party— they must have hit up the mess on the way here— and they’re not managing it very well.

“I’ll take care of it,” TJ says, rolling her eyes, and corners them before anyone else can get an eyeful.

“Everett,” she says with a narrow look, because there’s oblivious and there’s _oblivious_ , and she’s pretty sure he at least noticed Rush’s shirt.

He fidgets. “Hey, TJ,” he says guiltily.

“Dr. Rush,” she says, focusing on Rush.

“Hello,” Rush says vaguely.

“Let’s go have a chat,” TJ says to him.

Rush frowns. “No?” he says uncertainly, looking to Everett for backup.

“Yes,” TJ says, putting her hand on his arm and starting to maneuver him towards the bathroom. “It’ll just take a second. Important medical business to discuss.”

Everett, in a move pretty indicative of his culpability, ducks his head and doesn’t protest.

Out in the living room, Eli’s playing terrible pop music. But in the bathroom it’s muffled, and the air seems quiet and still. TJ positions Rush against the wall so he doesn’t fall over, and starts rummaging for a comb.

“Take your t-shirt off,” she says.

“What?” Rush hugs his arms across his chest. “No. Why?”

“It’s on inside-out,” she tells him gently. “Take it off.”

He freezes, looking intensely uncomfortable, and hunches his shoulders. “Oh,” he whispers.

They look at each other for a moment.

TJ turns her back on him. “I’ll find a comb,” she says. “I know Everett’s got one. It won’t be so obvious if we can fix your shirt and your hair.”

After a moment, she hears the rustle of clothing. She keeps her eyes averted, even though she’s seen him naked. She’s a medic, so she’s seen most of the crew naked. But she’s a medic, so she knows the difference between naked and _naked_. Even after she finds the comb, she waits to turn till he’s fixed his shirt.

Well, _fixed._ She touches the stretched-out, slightly torn collar. “You should probably keep your jacket on,” she says, and sees him flush slightly. She holds up the comb. “Here, let me—“

Rush hesitates, looking nervous, before he turns and lets her start to unsnarl his hair.

The silence is excruciating.

“You know that I,” TJ starts. “I mean, you know that Varro and I—“

“Yes,” Rush says quickly. “Of course. Of course I know that.”

“Everett and me, we were over even before—“

“Is this conversation absolutely necessary?” He’s obviously trying to to sound irritated, but he doesn’t quite manage it. Mostly he just sounds a little bit plaintive.

“I don’t know,” TJ says levelly. “Is it?”

That shuts him up for a minute.

“I apologize,” he says at last, “if my behavior has been—“

“You don’t have to apologize,” TJ says. “I just thought you should know. That I’m not— that you don’t have to worry about me taking him away from you.”

He says very quietly. “I know I don’t.”

There’s something in his voice that makes her pause. She wishes she could see his face. After a moment her comb resumes its motion.

“Okay,” she says finally. “You can turn around now.”

He does, very hesitantly, and she inspects him with a critical eye. Nothing’s as noticeable now, at least. He could have ripped his shirt doing work, she supposes. It’s a plausible excuse. If anyone asks.

“I just wish I had some concealer,” she says.

He gives her a confused look.

She reaches out and taps a fingertip against the bruise on his neck.

This time it’s not a slight flush. He turns a pretty solid crimson, his hand reflexively shooting up to cover the spot.

There’s a short pause.

“Oh, sweetheart,” TJ says softly.

She doesn’t know why she says that. She’s not really someone who’s given to using endearments. And if there’s anyone who doesn’t invite endearments, it’s Rush. He sort of flinches when she says it, and looks like he’s gearing up to be acerbic, but instead something folds in him and he turns exhausted and weirdly vulnerable, like he’s finally dropped some pretense.

“You shouldn’t be so nice to me,” he says, sounding defeated.

“No? Why not?”

“I’m not a nice person.”

“I don’t know,” she says. “You have your moments.”

He looks down, biting his lip, and says nothing.

TJ gives into the urge to embrace him briefly. He’s surprisingly warm under her touch, considering his tendency to get cold. She squeezes him tight, just for an instant. “Don’t hurt him,” she whispers, her mouth close to his ear.

As she steps back, she sees a painful expression flash across Rush’s face, almost too quick to catch.

“Oh,” he says quietly, “You know how it goes. It’s usually the case that people end up hurting themselves. Don’t you think?”

She studies him without saying anything. He takes a breath and manages an unsteady smile.

“Come on,” she says eventually. “Let’s get you back out there.”

Everett looks up immediately when they re-enter the main room, and takes in Rush’s altered appearance with a slightly ashamed look. TJ rolls her eyes at him. It’s a moment of the silent communication at which they have always been, often to their mutual frustration, very good, and it goes entirely over Rush’s head. TJ pushes him in Everett’s direction, and Everett drapes an arm over his shoulders, towing him away towards the couch.

Varro joins TJ, watching incredulously as Everett sits down and Rush _nestles next to him_ , his head practically resting on Everett’s shoulder. “How drunk _is_ he?” Varro asks.

“Let him have this one thing,” TJ says, a little sharply. “Can’t you?”

Varro looks at her uncertainly. “I didn’t mean—“

“You don’t know him.”

Which is true— but then again, does _she?_ Does anyone on the ship? Is she excluding Everett from that general category? She wonders if Rush makes sense to him, and, if so, if she really knows Everett. She’d had the sense, when they were seeing each other, of parts of himself he kept hidden. She supposes she knows now what at least one of those parts must have been, and her lack of surprise informs her that she must have had some inkling. But at the time, it had seemed to her that he was holding back not so much secrets as might-have-been-secrets. Things that had never been formed, never allowed to come to fruition, never had their names spoken aloud.

Unborn things, she thinks, and then wishes she hadn’t thought that.

Chloe is laughing beside Rush on the couch, Scott sitting at her feet. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she’s saying to Rush. “You have a _beautiful_ singing voice. We should form a Destiny ensemble. With Volker. Volker has a nice baritone.”

Rush makes a revolted face. “I’m afraid my schedule is booked for the indefinite future,” he tells her. “And should it free up, I will be immediately throwing myself into a star.”

“I’m serious!” Chloe says. “I was in an a cappella group at Harvard! Not, like, one of the good ones, but I know how to arrange music.”

“It does not surprise me at _all_ that you were in an a cappella group,” Eli says from the floor. “You were one of those snappy girls, weren’t you? You know—“ He pastes on a fake smile and swings from side to side, snapping his fingers. He coos, “When the sun shines we shine together, I’m a white girl singing Rihanna, you should make fun of my a capella, pella, pella…”

Chloe reaches down to smack him on the shoulder. “We covered _jazz standards_ , you dick!”

“That’s even worse!” Eli says, laughing.

“Chloe,” Rush says repressively, “don’t say _dick._ ”

Chloe spits out a mouthful of her drink. “Oh, my God,” she says. “ _First_ of all, _me?_ I am never, ever, ever, ever going to recover from having to hear _you_ say _dick_. That’s like hearing— “ She pauses just fractionally, and finishes, “—your math teacher say _dick_.”

 _Your dad_ , TJ thinks. She was going to say, _like hearing your dad_. Everyone’s a little too drunk tonight.

“ _Second_ of all,” Chloe continues, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you make it through two sentences without using the word _fuck_.”

“Manifestly untrue,” Rush says haughtily.

“ _Is_ it?” Everett says mildly. “I don’t know. I seem to recall you doing an awful lot of swearing earlier tonight.”

Rush throws him a _look_ , and they stare at each other for a long, heated moment. “Yes, well,” Rush says, a little breathlessly, “those were exceptional circumstances, don’t you think?”

“I certainly hope not,” Young says, taking a drink. The corner of his mouth has turned up in what could almost be a smirk.

TJ has to turn away and cough for a minute to cover a laugh. Out of the corner of her eye, she catches Camile Wray looking intensely amused on the opposite side of the room, and that sets her off again, and then their gazes meet, and Camile is having to turn away also, her hand firmly planted over her mouth.

Eli clears his throat. “ _Anyway_ ,” he says, “I think Chloe’s point is that you swear like a sailor. Even in Ancient, which is, like, kind of like swearing in Church Latin? I’m pretty sure the Ancients did _not_ intend their language to be used that way.”

“Then they shouldn’t have invented so many fucking expletives, should they,” Rush says, exasperated.

Chloe makes a muffled, indignant sound, gesturing at him, and the room at large collapses into hysterics. Everett grins and pulls Rush against him affectionately. Rush lets himself be pulled, albeit with a sulky scowl, and TJ wonders if she’d been too hard on Varro. It _is_ pretty incredible to witness this soft-edged version of Rush. Probably moreso if you haven’t spent weeks getting used to the sight of him sleeping curled in Everett’s arms.

“You’re all laughing at me,” Rush snaps from the couch, “and you will be punished.”

More general hilarity. From his chair in the corner, Greer says, “Yeah. You just keep telling yourself that, Doc.”

Everett darts a look at Rush and Rush’s mouth twitches. He throws Everett a sidelong, chastising glance. TJ can tell they’re talking to each other in their heads. They always think they’re being subtle, but they usually aren’t. She always finds herself curious about what’s been said— about what they say to each other when no one else can hear. It seems like knowing this would explain a lot about them.

Or maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe she’s just not cut out for that kind of understanding. There are times when she likes to think of herself as extraordinary— someone who's traveling through distant galaxies; dating a mercenary from another planet; patching up people who are infected with space bugs and alien fungi or turning into other things— but there are times, too, when she’s aware that she’s a very ordinary person. Her wants are very ordinary. She could be happy on Earth. She would have been happy on Earth, if she’d stayed behind and had the baby, studied to be a doctor, settled down. Ultimately, that was part of the problem with Everett. He didn’t know what he wanted, only that it wasn’t the ordinary things he had. Maybe if he’d realized— but it’s no use second-guessing. Sometimes it’s not that people start out wanting anything particularly extraordinary, anyway. It’s just the fact of the wanting that drives them far afield, the sense that they haven’t quite put their finger on (or won’t let themselves, maybe) the something-more that would let them rest.

She realizes she’s been gazing at Rush a little too long, thinking this, and hastily, she looks away.

* * *

Later, much later, when the laughter has died down, and all the available surfaces in the room have accumulated the inevitable detritus of parties– cups, bottles, playing cards, and the slumbering bodies of guests— and TJ is half-awake, with Varro’s head heavy in her lap, Rush shifts on the couch. TJ had thought he was asleep on Everett’s shoulder. She sees him glance at Chloe, who is curled at the couch’s other end, and who is almost certainly also not asleep. TJ can hear the faint sound of music from her earbuds.

Rush looks at TJ across the room.

She raises her eyebrows at him.

He carefully untangles himself from Everett and stands for just a moment, looking down at him. Everett frowns in his sleep and Rush reaches out to touch his hair, a a gesture that feels intensely private.

Then he turns abruptly and crosses the room to TJ, dropping down to the floor beside her. “I did want to talk to you,” he says in a hushed voice. She can tell he’s sobered up significantly since the last time they spoke. “But— alone.”

In other words, when Everett can’t listen.

“All right,” she says warily. “About what?”

“Many things,” he says. His eyes are lowered. “I thought you ought to know that— he did feel for you. Genuinely. In spite of—“ He makes a complicated gesture, meant, she supposes, to suggest the entire vast realm of human sexuality and all its complications. “There are times at which he still does. And he would have made a wonderful father, if that was what you wanted. On Earth, or… It wouldn’t have been— a pretense.”

TJ looks at him. She’s not entirely sure she believes what he’s saying. She believes that _he_ believes it. But he views the world through a very specific lens. And maybe in some ways he and Everett are still in that boat called avoidance, rowing determinedly for all they’re worth.

“That’s sweet of you to say,” she says neutrally. “But it seems a little like a sidebar.”

She’s recognizing the early signs of a large-scale Rush stratagem, and she’d thought he might have the good grace to look guilty. But he doesn’t look guilty. He just looks strange. He stares very intently at his hands. “You know,” he begins, “that as my genome changes, certain aspects of material existence become… impracticable.”

“Yes,” she says quietly.

“It requires more and more energy to regulate my body and mind. But at the same time, there are aspects of material existence that I’m able to transcend.”

“The… electricity,” TJ says unsurely. “You can generate it now.”

“Yes. I’m able to interconvert matter and energy to some degree. Gradually, that degree will increase. There will be a point at which—“ He hesitates. “It will become possible for me to effect material alterations at a biochemical level. For instance—“

His eyes flicker up to her.

“For instance,” he repeats, “it might be possible to correct a hexanucleotide repeat on a single arm of a human chromosome. If that happened to be something that a person suffered from.”

For a long time, TJ doesn’t know how to react. She looks away from Rush, and then she looks back at him. She looks down at Varro’s sleeping head in her lap. She brings her hands up to briefly cover her eyes. Her hands with their defective chromosomes. Her eyes with their defective chromosomes. All of her, her whole body, her dying nerves, overwritten with the same stupid, simple, persistent defect.

“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” she says eventually, in a shaky voice.

“Yes,” he says. “You do.”

“You can— what, _heal_ people?”

His eyes slide to Everett, for some reason. “No,” he says. “Not _yet_.”

“But you could— you could—“

“I could try. I can’t guarantee anything.”

She sits in silence for a while with this idea. With the idea of not dying. That’s not what it is, of course, but that’s what it feels like. It’s— too large, on some level, for her to interact with. Just like she’d found it hard to believe she would die. It came into her life slowly, a fact that she started waking up with: “I’m awake now, and I’m Tamara Johansen, and I’m dying.” Oddly like being pregnant: she couldn’t see it at first, and then gradually she did; she looked down at her body and knew something new. She didn’t have the option of not accepting it.

“What’s the catch?” she asks at last.

Rush flinches. “Does there have to be a catch?” he asks defensively.

TJ tilts her head and watches him. He was very sweet with Everett earlier. It was sweet when he blushed, and it was sweet when Everett turned him breathless, just like it was sweet back when they were in the infirmary, and she’d go to check on them, and find Rush with his face buried in Everett’s shoulder, gripping the back of his shirt like Everett might try to escape while he slept. None of those things were lies. They were physical reactions. Rush would have to be _very_ good to make his body lie. TJ doesn’t think he’s that good. But she does think he’s Rush.

“You tell me,” she says to him levelly. “Doesn’t there?”

He doesn’t meet her eyes. “In order for this to work,” he says, “it would require extremely precise timing. You understand that there are two—“ He motions with his hands: one hand spiking upwards, and the other downwards. His abilities, she thinks to herself, and his life. “So I would need an estimate. A timeline. Of how long I can expect to live.”

TJ frowns at him, because this is hardly a catch. He could have simply asked her this in the infirmary. “It’s hard to say, exactly. On the current regime of antivirals, I’d certainly say that we’re looking at a timeline of at least a year.”

He nods, as though this is not unexpected. “And—“ He pauses, and with a sudden sinking sensation, she can feel it coming. The catch. “And if I were to stop taking the antivirals,” he says, his voice so quiet she almost can’t hear it. “How long then?”

They look at each other.

 _You don’t give a damn about me_ , TJ thinks.

Then she wonders if that’s unfair. It’s very hard, sometimes, to know what Rush does or doesn’t give a damn about. He hides it very well. _Very_ well. Someone spent a long time teaching him how dangerous it could be to reveal whether or not you care. So now he doesn’t. And you don’t know until it’s too late.

“You’re asking me this,” she says steadily, “because you want to know when you’ll be able to do— whatever it is you’re doing. When you’ll be strong enough to do it. When you’ll be sick enough.”

“Yes,” he says.

“You know that Everett wants you to live.”

He shuts his eyes. “Everett,” he whispers unsteadily, “is not going to get what he wants. I can’t give it to him. If I could, I—“ He stops, pressing his lips tightly together, and doesn’t say anything else.

Does she believe this? 

She’s a medic. She might have been a doctor. She trusts the body more than she trusts the self. In the Air Force, especially in the elite parts of the Air Force, you got a lot of cases that made you think about this. People who walked away from crashes in Afghanistan feeling fine, and then two weeks later they couldn’t see, or their legs didn’t work, and there wasn’t a reason for it; it was just that the body had a harder time lying than the self did. _I’m fine_ , they’d say, but they weren’t fine, and maybe they didn’t even know it; maybe they were that accomplished at lying to themselves. For as long as the truth incubated within them, they didn't have to face it. But sooner or later the truth will— well, out.

She thinks that Rush was hanging on to Everett in his sleep for a long time before he stopped saying he was fine. If he’s even stopped yet. And that there’s probably not much he wouldn’t give Everett. If he could.

This doesn’t mean that she trusts him.

It doesn’t mean that she trusts herself.

After all: she wants to live.

“Three weeks,” she says almost soundlessly. “On the short side. Eight weeks on the long side. It depends how hard you push.”

He reaches out and grasps her hand very tightly. “Perfect,” he says.

It’s not perfect. She wants to communicate that to him. She wants to tell him that she, of all people, knows about lowered expectations: the little scrap you get that feels like a lot, but only because you’d been told you should get nothing. She wants to tell him a lot of things. Do you understand, she wants to say, that he’s not going back home to the house in the suburbs and the white picket fence? Do you get that it was never going to be that, once he figured out what that something-more was? Would you really have wanted that for him even if he didn't: a life with something missing? —A life of lowered expectations, she thinks.

But she doesn’t get the chance. He says, “Thank you. I have to go now.”

“What are you talking about? It’s three in the morning,” TJ says. “Where could you possibly have to go?”

“I have things to do,” he says. “There’s— a lot to accomplish.”

Their eyes drift to Everett for a moment— sleeping heavily, his head tipped back against the back of the couch, his arm still outstretched as though holding the ghost of Rush to him.

They look back at each other.

TJ doesn’t say anything.

“I told you,” Rush whispers tiredly. “I warned you. I’m not a nice person.”

He stands and goes to where Chloe is pretending to sleep. He touches her shoulder. She jolts to attention, pulling her earbuds out and smiling wanly at him. “Ready to go?” she says.

He nods shortly.

TJ looks at Matt, who’s sleeping with his head pillowed on his jacket. Chloe must catch something faintly judgmental in her expression, because she says softly, “He knows I don’t sleep well. He’s used to it. He knew what he was getting.”

 _—into_ , TJ expects her to finish, but she doesn’t. _He knew what he was getting._ As though Chloe is a questionable purchase Matt’s made. TJ always assumed that Chloe and Rush spent so much time together because they’re both interested in math. Now she wonders how much more there is to it than that. How much they’ve come to have in common.

“I suppose that’s something,” TJ says. “To know what you’re getting.”

She gazes at Rush levelly when she says it, and sees him flinch: looking abruptly away.

“Come on,” Chloe murmurs to him. “We’ll be back in no time at all.”

Rush isn’t looking at _her,_ either. “Of course we will,” he says.

Something in his body suggests he might be lying.

TJ watches the two of them leave. She leans back against the wall, her hand coming to rest in Varro’s hair. For a second, she feels so weary that she doesn’t know how she’ll ever get up off the floor. What has she done? she wonders. She could still undo it. She could call Rush back. She could wake Everett up. But she can’t fix the thing she wants to fix, the thing that needs fixing. That’s always the medic’s curse. You show up after the accident, after the disaster, and if you could reverse time, you would, but you can’t, so instead you work to try and patch people back together.

Part of the problem is that she isn’t sure Rush _wants_ to be patched back together. At least, not from this particular accident. Where does that leave her, then? Who’s the patient?

Her eyes go to Everett again.

Sometimes you arrive in the midst of the disaster, and find there’s nothing you can do but wait. Wait till the winds die down. Till the chopper stops crashing. That’s when it’s time to assess the situation, time for triage, time to see what you can save.

"Oh, sweetheart," she says again, soundlessly. 

She doesn't know who she's saying it for.

Varro stirs sleepily under her hand and blinks up at her. " 'dyou say something?" he asks, confused and drowsy. " 'verything okay?"

TJ touches his forehead. "I'm fine," she says.


	41. Chapter 41

Young woke to the sound of someone typing on a laptop. It produced a feeling of wellbeing in him that was not immediately echoed by his physical parts. His head ached, his mouth was dry, sticky, and sour-tasting, and he had a limited recollection of the last night’s events. But still, there was the sound of someone typing.

He remembered—

He opened his eyes.

He was stretched out on his couch, neatly covered by a mauve blanket. Rush was sitting on the floor next to him, frowning at his laptop screen and thinking in calm, clean lines of code. He was chewing on the end of a pen that he held between two fingers as though it were a cigarette.

Young rolled onto his side and leaned forward so he could rest his head on Rush’s shoulder. “That’s a disgusting habit,” he said. “You don’t know where that pen’s been.”

“ _You’re_ a disgusting habit,” Rush said without turning. “I’m certain you feel terrible. Tamara left a bottle of saltwater for you on the table.”

“No Gatorade?” Young said wistfully.

“The Gatorade is, and I quote, for medical emergencies only.”

“She means it’s for you. You _are_ a medical emergency. As a person.”

“Yes, well.” Rush waved a distracted hand at the bottle of saltwater.

Young pressed a kiss to the side of his neck and sat up before Rush could succeed in swatting him off with a hand. The saltwater tasted awful, as he’d suspected it would, but it did make him feel a little more human. As he drank it, he regarded Rush, who was now ignoring him with some zeal.

“You know,” he said carefully at last, “don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m kind of… surprised you’re here?”

“Why?” Rush asked absently, squinting at the computer screen. “Where am I meant to be?”

“Nowhere. I mean, here. You’re supposed to be here. I just thought you might be…” Young wasn’t sure how to explain that he’d kind of been afraid that Rush might have decided to camp out in the FTL drive with his radio, throwing a tantrum at Eli and refusing to acknowledge Young’s existence. Or, at the very least, that he might have crawled back into the don’t-touch-me don’t-fucking-touch-me zone. “It doesn’t matter. I’m glad you stayed.”

Rush shrugged minutely. 

“Does this mean—“

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Rush said shortly. He hunched his shoulders.

“Okay,” Young said cautiously.

After a while, Rush said, still staring at his computer, “It helped. My head is… clearer.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Young said quickly, alarmed. “I mean, I didn’t—“

“I know you didn't intend to. I suspect you just… Something happens when our psychic architecture interacts that— helps.” Rush looked tense. He had given up on pretending to work. “No doubt it could be abstracted from the physical act, as I don’t believe there to be an intrinsic connection, but—“

“That sounds like an awful lot of work,” Young said, stretching back out on the couch. “I’m a busy guy. I don’t have time for abstracting things.”

Rush turned his head and fixed Young with a level look.

Young shrugged. “I mean, if you wanted to get started on some experiments…”

The very corner of Rush’s mouth twitched up. He turned back. “You should get dressed. It’s a half-hour till the fourteen-hundred briefing.”

“ _What?_ ”

“You slept for more than eleven hours.”

“And you didn’t wake me _up?_ ” Young was throwing the blanket off and trying to figure out where his boots were.

“You were hungover. And I was busy.”

“Busy with _what?_ ”

“Things.”

“What things?”

“Various things,” Rush said unhelpfully.

Young sighed. Well, he thought, he’d known what he was getting into. “Fine,” he said. “You know, you’re lucky I don’t put you under a twenty-four hour watch.”

“I believe you’re aware that would immediately put an end to any projected experiments.”

“Oh, my God,” Young said burying his face in his hands. “I can’t believe you’re trying to bribe me with sex.”

Rush said airily, “A bribe is a guarantee. I’ve made no such offer.”

“Thank you. That really reassures me a lot.” Young reached out and tousled Rush’s hair as he stood, causing Rush to scowl ferociously at him. “Sorry,” Young said, spreading his hands. “It’s hard to resist. Plus, with no guarantee, I’ve got to grab what I can get.”

He wandered across the room to collect his discarded jacket. He could feel Rush watching him. When he’d gotten dressed and sat down to lace up his boots, he said finally, “What?”

Rush shook his head. “Nothing. Just— please don’t make the mistake of forgetting who I am,” he said.

* * *

Young’s headache wasn’t really improved by sitting through the briefing on the Nakai tracking device. Not that the briefing was particularly interminable, which made him wonder if the headache was really coming from him or Rush. It was increasingly difficult for him to figure things like that out, these days.

In the front of the room, Eli and Chloe had just finished a summary of the efforts to find the device. “So,” Eli said, “the main thing is that we need to buy ourselves enough time to find this tracking device, while also not getting pulled out of FTL by any obelisk planets until we’ve actually _found_ the tracking device. There’s pretty much only one solid solution for this, which is forcing an intergalactic jump.”

“There are no obelisk planets in the intergalactic void,” Chloe explained. “And we should be able to maintain current energy levels for three weeks before we need to refuel using a star. We think that should be long enough to find the device.”

Telford, lounging near them, frowned. “Why haven’t we done this already, if it’s such an obvious solution?”

Chloe glanced fleetingly at Rush. “We weren’t ready before now,” she said uneasily. “The calculations are complicated. And Dr. Rush will have to interface with the central processor.”

“She means,” Eli said, staring at the floor, “he’ll have to sit in the interface chair.”

Young’s jaw clenched. //And when were you going to tell me about this?// he demanded.

//Now,// Rush said.

//Thanks so much forthe consideration.//

//Not liking it won’t change the necessity.//

//And how much is the chair going to fuck you up this time?//

//I doubt any serious damage will be done,// Rush said coolly.

Neither of them had looked at the other.

“We need to do this _now_ ,” Telford said. “We should have done it a week ago.”

“We can do it today,” Eli said.

That seemed to placate Telford. He sat back in his chair. “At least this will finally give us the chance to monitor how the neural interface device interacts with the human nervous system.”

“Great,” Eli said under his breath. “Everybody wins.”

“Let’s move onto the issue of actually _finding_ the device,” Telford said. “It’s my understanding that the sensor modifications haven’t provided any useful information. So I’m assuming you have another plan.”

Rush took a breath. He said carefully, “Based on certain of my subjective experiences when Destiny was infected with the Nakai computer virus, I believe that the Nakai may have boarded the ship early in the mission. There is—“ He broke off, his gaze flickering to his left. “There is some objective evidence that this is the case. When Eli was removing the virus and restoring the CPU, he came across indications that the AI—“ He paused again.

No one spoke.

“That the AI _what?”_ Telford finally said impatiently.

Rush startled. “That— the AI attempted to drastically alter its own programming early in the mission.”

“But how do you know that was related to the _Nakai?_ ”

Something uneasy was happening with Rush’s weather. When Young looked over at him, he was surprised to see that the AI was projecting to him as well. He could see it leaning against the wall, looking like Jackson, its expression tense.

“Do not think about it,” the AI said tightly.

“I just— know it was,” Rush said, his voice unsteady.

“Nick,” the AI snapped, agitated. “Do not  _think_  about it.”

//What’s going on?// Young said sharply.

“I’m sorry, but that’s not good enough,” Telford said. “We’re on a very tight timetable here, and if we don’t have any evidence that whatever you’re talking about was related to the Nakai—“

Rush was very tired, and expending a lot of mental energy, and Telford always ate up his concentration. He’d tried to split his attention so he could focus on Telford, the AI, and Young, and it left a very thin crust of available resources, through which the word _Nakai_ drilled savagely.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he said raggedly, one hand coming to his temple, as he felt himself begin to losecontrol and

 _He doesn’t scream, he doesn’t_ need _to scream, any more than he needs to breathe or laugh or cry, because a scream is not a communicative act it is a physical reaction and he no longer has a physical body as such, which is to say that he has a physical body in a certain sense, insofar as the ship is a body, and it is_ his _body, but his relationship to the ship is not the relationship of an Alteran brain to an Alteran body and oh God what he means to say is that he does not_ need _to scream, his body does not_ scream _, his body_ cannot _scream, and yet the impulse persists and all he can think is scream, SCREAM, and there is no outlet for that impulse and that is the worst part, perhaps he understands at last the function of the scream, because how is he to survive when he cannot SCREAM and he MUST SCREAM and it was a mistake to give a mechanical thing the same capacity for sentience as a transient life form for the one simple reason that it  CAN              NOT SCREAM—_

Young stumbled up out of his chair, vaguely aware that Rush, panicked, had flung himself towards the hallway. The lights were flickering wildly, and the whole room smelled like ozone.

“What the _hell?_ ” Telford demanded.

Young had almost touched the edge of the doorway when he felt the ghost-presence of the AI, also panicked, shove its way into Rush’s brain in an effort to make him STOP, PLEASE STOP, _STOP, PLEASE,_ and

 _he is in the water and he cannot see them through the water but they are in his brain and so he knows they are there; he can feel them splitting open his thoughts as though he offers no more resistance than the crisp hardened shell of a nut, crack, crack, crack like the steel jaws of a nutcracker, meticulous and precise, nut by nut, and why is it so_ easy _, why is it so_ painful _, why is what is_ painful _always_ easy, _have you ever thought about that, Nick? Have you ever wondered if you want this, if you want to be cracked open, if it’s your own fault because you want it and of course it is, and if you deserve it then that is in its own way a wanting, and God knows you deserve this, which even they know; they pull out the meat of the nut and it is memories of Gloria and they show her to him, dying, screaming for him—_

Rush was huddled in the hallway, his hands folded over his head, his breath shuddering in and out of him. The lights were showering sparks down onto the deck plating.

“Nick,” Young said in a low voice. “Nick—“

 _Nick, she sobs, and she hardly looks human, stick-limbed in her hospital dress, and she says, It hurts so_ much _, why are you doing this to me? But he wasn’t, she didn’t say that, this isn’t what happened, it’s just what they want him to believe, and she didn’t say You wanted me dead, you couldn’t even wait for me to be dead before you were shagging David; he told me all about it; he wanted it to hurt, and it_ did— _But it’s NOT TRUE, she knew, she knew and she_ liked _David, but it did hurt didn’t it, it must’ve hurt, it_ must _have hurt and it_ did _hurt so maybe this is right, he doesn’t know anymore, he thinks it’s right, he should have to endure this and in fact it’s too_ easy _it should hurt_ much more _—_

Young crouched down and got an arm around Rush’s shoulders. “No,” he said.

It doesn’t have to hurt _, Young says and he is standing in the_  
_doorway trying to get Rush to come inside because Rush_  
_is out on the porch and he is barefoot and shivering and soaked_  
_in the water from the tank and it is snowing outside and Rush_  
_doesn’t know how he got here and frankly this fucking scares_  
_him a little bit out of his fucking mind but Young says_ It’s  
okay, it’s okay, this is the cabin, remember? We decided you were  
allowed to be here. It’s okay. _And Rush is not really sure that_  
_they did fucking decide that in fact he’s fairly fucking sure he_  
_would have decided nothing of the kind and it would be just_  
_like Young to make a unilateral stupid fucking decision which is_  
_after all how they got into this mess but he really_  
_he really_  
_he really just needs to be here right now just for a second just_  
_for one second so he lets himself dart inside and_  
_Young wraps a blanket around him and Young doesn’t say any-_  
_thing and maybe he understands that Rush can’t talk when he’s_  
_like this he doesn’t think he can talk like this something_ happens  
_something happens because the structure of his brain is not as let_  
_us say fixed as it used to be and that is a problem but right now_  
_it is not a problem because Young doesn’t say anything Young_  
_just sits with him on the couch and rubs a warm hand over his_  
_back and when Rush can breathe a little bit better_

Young let the hallway exist around them. The lights had stopped spitting sparks. He was still stroking Rush’s back with a steady hand. Gradually he became aware that Telford was watching them from the doorway. After a moment, Telford turned back to the CI room.

“We’ll postpone the rest of the briefing,” he said curtly. “Start prepping for the jump.”

Young looked back down at Rush. “Are you okay?” he asked quietly.

In response, Rush pulled away from him and stood, pacing a few steps away and raking a hand through his hair. He was still breathing hard.

 _What was that?_ Young mouthed to the AI, which had materialized beside him.

“A problem,” the AI said. It was watching Rush. After a moment, it approached him cautiously. “Nick—“ it said.

“Oh, fuck off,” Rush snapped at it. “That was your fucking fault, so don’t act like I’m the one who needs to be _handled_ here.”

Telford shot Young a bewildered look.

Young sighed. “Apparently we’ve decided that now would be the best time for Colonel Telford to meet the AI,” he said in a resigned tone, with a meaningful look at Rush.

Rush made a sharp, frustrated gesture. “Yes. Fine. Fuck. Project to Colonel Telford, why don’t you. Destiny— David. David— the AI.”

The AI shot Telford a faintly hostile look.

Telford flinched and stared at it. Presumably it had just appeared to him. “Why does it look like _Jackson_?” he asked.

Rush laughed, a little hysterically. “Why, would you prefer it looked like _you?_ How fascinated you’ll be when you find out who it looks like to Colonel—“

“Let’s stick to the topic at hand,” Young said quickly. To Rush, privately, he said. //What the _fuck?_ I don’t appreciate that.//

Rush made a frustrated sound. He removed his glasses and covered his eyes with his hands. After a moment, he sent Young a note of something irritated and slightly chastened. “I can find the tracking device,” he said. “The information is buried in the subconscious of the AI.”

The AI crossed its arms over its chest and bit its lip.

“If it’s in the AI’s subconscious,” Young said, narrowing his eyes, “then how are _you_ going to find it?”

“I have access to the AI’s subconscious,” Rush said.

The AI looked at Young with a conflicted expression. “That statement is true but misleading,” it said. “We _share_ a subconscious.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Rush said quietly, just as Young snapped, “You _what?_ ”

In retrospect, it was obvious, of course. Young thought back to Rush’s first confused dreams after integrating with the ship, in which people from his own life had shown up speaking Ancient, or in oddly Ancient settings. The way that Ancient words and images had leaked so fluently into his own thoughts, even into his flashbacks. His persistent confusion about languages and timelines.

“It’s perfectly _fine_ ,” Rush said tightly. “Everything is under control.”

“It is absolutely not under control,” Young said ferociously. “When were you going to tell me this?”

“Your obsession with temporality is one of the most unappealing things about you,” Rush said acidly. “When, when, when. What year is it. Sooner, later, never… Why does it _matter?_ ”

“Yes, because it’s so _unreasonable_ to expect someone to know what _year_ it is,” Young said. He was very close to losing his temper. “Or to maybe divulge information of significant tactical _and_ personal importance, especially when that information is about how they’re being _eaten from the inside_ by a fucking spaceship—“

Rush smacked his bare palm against the wall in a gesture of wordless frustration. But instead of launching into a tirade, he took a deep breath and seemed to dig deep into himself for some scrap of control. “We’ll talk,” he said in a very tense voice, “about it _later._ All _right?_ ”

Young was slightly taken aback. He thought maybe Telford was, too, because there was a long moment of silence.

“How about for now,” Telford said finally, in a neutral tone, “we just let Nick lay out what he’s worked up as a plan. I’m sure we’d all like everyone to be on the same page with the relevant information.”

Rush gave him a long look. Telford narrowed his eyes.

“Fine,” Rush said abruptly. He glanced guardedly over his shoulder at the AI. “The AI was created by merging the consciousness of a living Ancient with the CPU of this ship.”

“… A doctor?” Young said, without really meaning to. “A doctor, who stayed behind while his family left with Atlantis?”

Rush turned on him sharply, his face full of alarm. “How did you know that?”

“I saw him,” Young said. “One of his memories. While the Nakai were in your mind.”

Rush relaxed. “Yes. Parts of him remain in our system. Not all of him was successfully purged.”

“ _Purged?_ ” Young said.

“The AI rewrote its own code. It tried to write him out.” Rush’s eyes had gone to the AI. It had walked away and was standing down the corridor, its shoulders hunched and its arms held tightly against itself, a picture of unhappiness.

“Why would it do that?”

“I don’t know,” Rush murmured. “But I can guess.”

“Don’t,” the AI said.

“When the Nakai boarded, the first time, something happened.”

“ _Stop_.” It sounded agonized. “Nick. Do not _do_ this. I will terminate the program you’re executing!”

“The hell you will!” Young snapped at it.

“Oh, stop.” Rush sounded exasperated. “It’s nothing serious. It just loses its interpersonal skills when it’s stressed.”

“Right,” Young said shortly. “And _that’s_ never caused any problems, has it?”

Rush waved him off. His attention was still focused on the AI. “We’re going to have to find it,” he said. “You know that.”

“Yes,” it said miserably.

“We’re going to have to know what happened when they came on board. Those memories are linked to your source code.”

“I wish that you would please find another way,” it whispered.

“There is no other way,” Rush said gently.

“If you do not find another way, then I will not help you. I won't! You cannot make me.”

“You don’t have to help me.”

“You do not _understand!”_ the AI said. "You are careless! You do not _care!_  You are— you are—" Agitated, it broke off and flung itself away through a bulkhead.

They stared after it for a moment.

“Jackson’s going to love this,” Telford said after a moment.

“I didn’t think you were _speaking_ to Jackson,” Rush said shortly, raising an eyebrow at him. Then he leaned against the wall and seemed to be thinking. “Previously,” he said, “before it rewrote its own code, it would never have changed appearance. It would always have appeared as the doctor, because that’s who it _was_. But now it has no inherent template upon which to base its interactions. It allows itself to be shaped by those around it instead. Their needs or— desires, perhaps.” He seemed to find something about this distressing. His mouth tightened as he stared at the floor.

“Returning to the goal of sharing information,” Telford said after a moment. “I should put on the table that I brought a Tok’ra memory recall device with me from Earth. It can’t target specific memories, but it can boost general recall. It would almost certainly—“ his eyes flickered to Rush— “prove useful for this purpose.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Young said with a hard laugh. “You want to _boost his recall_? He’s already having flashbacks so bad he can barely function, and he loses control over his electrical fields when they hit.”

Telford shrugged. “It was just a suggestion,” he said mildly.

“The intergalactic jump is more pressing,” Rush said quickly. “At any rate. Perhaps we should focus on that.”

“Yes,” Young said shortly. “Let’s. David, we’ll meet you in the chair room in—“ //What?// he shot tersely at Rush.

//Ninety minutes,// Rush said.

“—ninety minutes. Dismissed.”

Telford gave him a look that suggested he didn’t feel Young had the authority to dismiss him. He turned to Rush. “Consider taking a fucking nap, Nick. You look like shit.”

Rush made a disdainful face at him as he left.

“He’s right, you know,” Young said evenly. “You look terrible.”

“Oh, stop. You’re going to hurt my feelings.”

“I’m going to assume you didn’t sleep at all last night.”

Rush shrugged and looked away. “A bit,” he said guardedly.

“Meaning the five minutes you fell asleep after we—“

“Yes,” Rush said, cutting him off. “Then.”

“Great. That’s great.” Young tried to hide the fact that for some reason it felt like a personal insult, or betrayal, or just— one more way in which Rush was always slipping away from him, maybe, proof that Rush wasn’t _human_ , proof that Rush would never really be _his_.

“It’s not about you,” Rush said quietly. He was staring at the deck. “I have to pull the memories forwards. I told you already.”

“And not sleeping—“

“It weakens my control.”

“So you’re deliberately torturing yourself,” Young said. “You’re _literally_ torturing yourself in order to _psychologically_ torture yourself, trying to force yourself to flash back to things so fucking painful that—“

“It’s what’s _necessary_ ,” Rush said, raising his voice a little.

“Nick—“

“ _Don’t,”_ Rush said, leveling a finger at him. “Don’t you _dare_. There _are no other options_. Would it be wonderful to live in some fantasy world where there were? Of course it would. But that is not the _fucking_ world we live in, so maybe you could join us down here.”

“You know _I’m_ having these flashbacks, too, right?” Young snapped. “Every time. Maybe you could think about that before you accuse me of living in a _fantasy_ world. You’re torturing _me_ when you torture yourself, so forgive me for wishing you just sometimes, occasionally, on the _rarest_ of occasions, _talk_ to me!”

Rush took a long breath. He shut his eyes for a moment. Then he gave Young an unsteady smile. “It’s an awfully big ask, don’t you think? Don’t let the fact that we’re sleeping together go to your head.”

“Don’t worry,” Young said. “I’m under no illusion that you actually give a damn about me.”

It came out a little more bitterly than he’d intended. He'd meant it as— well. Not a joke, maybe. He saw Rush flinch and duck his head before he straightened, his face and mind adopting a familiar, imperious attitude: the fortress with no chinks in it. “Good,” he said. “Excellent. I’ll see you in ninety minutes.”

He turned on his heel and walked away.

Young stared after him. He wasn’t really sure what had just happened.

“Fuck,” he whispered quietly.

* * *

An hour and forty minutes later, Young was leaning against the wall of the chair room, watching as Telford’s research team finished unpacking their equipment around the monitors. The room felt crowded, and he didn’t like the idea of all these people staring at Rush in the chair. Not that Rush would mind, probably; it just felt— private. Like watching someone else sleep. Something you didn’t do to a person, only to… something that wasn’t a person.

Telford approached him, looking edgy. “You want to tell me where the hell he is?” he said.

Young raised his eyebrows. “I thought I wasn’t his babysitter.”

Telford gave him a hard look.

Young gazed at him blankly and shrugged.

He held out for another five minutes before he sighed and brought his mind into apposition with Rush. Rush, who was… on his back, half-inside a bulkhead, his hands extended up into open circuitry that he appeared to be powering by himself. At least, a pale bluish glow was emanating from his fingers up into the circuits. He wasn’t doing much other than that; his mind was following the oscillations of a single component of Destiny’s life support controls, cycling endlessly through loops of positive and negative feedback. His mind wasn’t really in the ship, but it wasn’t in his physical body, either. It was just… quiet. He was just _there_ , just _being there_.

There was something inhuman about the scene that Young found disturbing— like Rush was just one more piece of the ship, without any agency or consciousness, _plugged in_ via the circuitry and volunteering his body.

//Rush,// he said, unable to keep some of the fear out of his voice.

Gradually, a wave of potential-Rush-ness returned, in the same way it did when Rush was coming out of the ship. It was soft and inquisitive and very concerned about Young, not sure why he was upset. Young felt completely incapable of dealing with it right now, which made it more concerned and a little bit nervous. But when Rush himself returned, he seemed relaxed.

//Yes,// he said, dropping his hands from the circuitry, which went black. //I’m here. What’s wrong?//

//What are you _doing?_ //

//Practicing. Sorry. I didn’t think you would notice.//

//Practicing _what?_ //

//Meditating. The AI thinks it’s a good idea.// He was struggling, in a clumsy, uncoordinated fashion, to get up from the bulkhead.

//I’m so glad to hear you take suggestions from _someone_.//

//I take suggestions from you.//

//Name one.//

Rush paused in the midst of shoving his jacket on. //I was going to say the last one involved a bed, but now that I think of it, we never quite made it there. So I suppose you’re right. You win.//

He was deliberately trying to be charming, Young thought, because he knew that Young was upset. It was a careful piece of manipulation, which didn’t stop it from being frustratingly effective. //Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,// he said.

//I’m… running late, aren’t I.// Now Rush was trying to put on his boots.

//Yes. You are running more than fifteen minutes late, and also: that’s not what I meant. You’re not going to charm me into forgetting how many totally horrifying things you’ve already managed to cram into the _three hours_ that I’ve been awake.//

//It’s good to know you find me charming,// Rush said. //You said I looked terrible. I thought I’d lost out on my shot at the bed.//

//Stop that,// Young said. He felt sharply and wrenchingly divided. His instinct, on the one hand, was to say, _The only way we’re going to bed is if you_ sleep _, for God’s sake._ Which reminded him how fucked-up Rush was right now, how fucked-up everything was. And yet on the other hand—

//You like it,// Rush said.

//No.//

//Ah. Then I suppose I’ll have to make it up to you.//

Young rolled his eyes. //Now you’re laying it on a little thick.//

//Yes, yes. I’ll be there in a moment.//

He arrived several minutes later, out of breath, and settled his gaze on Young as soon as he stepped in the room, fixing him with a slight smirk. Young stared at him repressively. Rush shrugged.

“Where the hell have you been?” Telford snapped.

“I was taking a _nap_ ,” Rush said absently, leaning over Eli’s shoulder to look at a monitor.

//Don’t bait Telford,// Young said.

//I’m not.//

//Yes, you are.//

//Maybe a little. Would you rather I baited you instead?//

//I’m pretty sure that’s what you’re doing right now.//

Rush glanced up at him for a second, amused.

“Now that you’ve decided to grace us with your presence,” Telford said shortly, “is it fair to assume we’re ready?”

“Yeah,” Eli said. “I mean, we should be.”

“Yes,” Rush said. He looked at Young.

After a moment, Young realized that he was waiting for him. For his approval. “Sure,” he said a little uncertainly. “Go ahead.”

Rush nodded and approached the chair. It lit up for him, as usual, dimming the room’s lights, which didn’t seem to give him pause at all. He just dropped casually into it. Young was the one who winced at the metallic sound of the restraints. Rush sent him a light touch of reassurance in the short moment before his mind was dragged away into the darkness of the ship.

“Things are looking good,” Eli said after about thirty seconds. “He’s plotting our course for the jump.”

“Sir,” one of Telford’s scientists said, frowning. “I think you’ll want to take a look at this. His EEG readings have altered drastically.”

Eli said, “Yeah, duh.”

“No, I mean—“ the scientist looked up. “His EEG is now a perfect match to the power fluctuations in the CPU. Down to the nanosecond. That can’t be a coincidence.”

Eli and Young looked at each other.

“Let’s make sure we’re recording all of this,” Telford said, crossing the room to peer at the console.

Young, who was perhaps listening for it, or listening for _something_ , heard the quiet click of a lighter from the back of the room. He took a deep breath, letting his eyes rest for a moment longer on Rush’s limp body, locked in the interface chair.

He could hear its footsteps. He looked to his left, and wasn’t surprised to see it standing there: looking more like Rush than it had the last time, wearing a high-collared black jacket and trailing smoke from the cigarette in its hand. It glanced at him with a crooked half-smile.

“What do you say we get the fuck out of here?” it asked.


	42. Chapter 42

Young tried not to look at it at first— the thing that looked like Rush, but wasn’t, the thing that was standing much too close to him, close enough that he imagined he could feel the faint warmth of its body, although it didn’t _have_ a body, and even if it did, wouldn’t it be cold, like Rush? Or no. It was trying to be _better,_ so it would be warm, probably, warm where Rush was cold, warm to the touch,but it didn’t matter, because he wasn’t going to touch it, because it wasn’t real, and it wasn’t _Rush._

“Are you _ignoring_ me?” it said, sounding amused. “What, is this a new game we’re playing?”

It stole around to stand in front of him, lazy and imperious-looking, small and neat in its crisp new clothing, smelling faintly of the smoke from its cigarette, which Young had never really found an appealing odor, but now did, suddenly. There was a hard edge to it that hadn’t been there when he’d met it in the interface; it was more like Rush now, he supposed. So much like Rush that he found it overwhelming. He felt as though he were alone in a very small room with Rush, just the two of them, the privacy pushing in upon them, compressing them together.

“I have to say,” it said, moving closer to him and lowering its eyes in faux-demureness, “I don’t really think it’s a game you’re going to win.”

Young swallowed. //I’m— I’m not ignoring you,// he said. //Give me a minute to get out of here, okay?//

“Oh, fine,” it said, sounding bored. “Material embodiment is such a chore.”

Young shot it a narrow look, and turned to Eli. “I have to go talk to the AI,” he said in a low voice. “Can you keep an eye on things for me? And by things, I mean—“

“Right,” Eli said. He glanced at Telford. “Are you sure you really want to—?”

“I won’t be long.”

“I’m not the AI,” the Rush-thing said crossly. “How dare you.”

//Look, I’m leaving to talk to you. What more do you want?//

“Should I make a list?”

//No. It was a rhetorical question. I don’t actually care what you want.//

It looked away. “That was more or less what I was afraid of.”

It followed Young as he left the chair room, trailing him through the ship’s corridors. The lights overhead and at the base of the walls lit up for it as it passed, giving it the same strange ambience of obscure, technological royalty that Rush sometimes had. It had an intensely physical presence that was disconcerting. Young couldn’t tell if it felt more _there_ than Rush, or if it just felt more there than it should be, for an artificial shadow. In the back of his mind, he could feel its thoughts: the magnetic pull they exerted, just as Rush’s always did, wanting him to come into alignment with them. He resisted; he didn’t want to see them, and he didn’t know why, exactly. He kept his distance, even when he became aware that it was quietly, consciously inviting him in, leaving itself exposed, opening its borders.

As they left the populous parts of the ship, the walls began to melt around them and reform into a grove of tall, thin trees pierced by beams of sunlight that touched the reddish ground. The air was filled with a clean scent, something that hinted at altitude and forests. It was warm, and Young could hear birdsong overhead.

“Nice,” he said. “What’s this an apology for— your existence?”

It stared down at the leaf-covered ground, coming to a halt. There was something tight and unhappy in its expression.

“See, that’s how I know the difference,” Young said cuttingly. “If I said that, Rush wouldn’t care. He’d probably, I don’t know, just say something worse. He wouldn’t look at me like he was _hurt_.”

“No,” it said quietly. “That’s probably true. I— he doesn’t really… he doesn’t really know what hurts anymore.”

Young didn’t know what to say to that. He sighed and looked around. “Where are we?”

“Berkeley. I used to teach there.”

“No. You didn’t.”

“Oh, for—“ It made a frustrated sound and turned away for a moment. “Are you going to fucking police my pronouns again? Is that the level of conversation we’re stuck at? Because if so, there’s no fucking point to any of this.”

“You’re the one who dragged me out here,” Young said, his face set.

“I wanted you to _look_. I wanted you to _see._ ”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“ _Me._ I wanted you to _see me._ ” It made a sharp gesture between their heads. “I’m _here_ , but you’re not _looking_. Why are you not _looking?_ ”

“I know what you are,” Young said curtly. “I saw your mind in the interface. As much of it as _was_ a mind, anyway.”

“That wasn’t me. Or not— _fuck_.” It dropped its head, leaning against one of the pale trees. “I was only thirty percent of me then; that’s not what I’m like. Normally, I mean. That’s not what this _is_.”

“Normally,” Young said flatly. “That’s really the word you’re going with, here?”

“I _realize_ you don’t want to understand this, but you seem to have no problem with the fact that I’m– that my— that _his_ body is constantly changing, that he was human, and now he’s not, increasingly; you don’t accuse him of not being _him,_ so why are you so _fucking_ set against this when it’s just another kind of change? _Better_ , not worse, for once, or do you only like him damaged?”

Young said, his throat tight, “Right. How could I forget? You’re _better_ than him.”

“Is that what you’re so _fucking_ afraid of?” It laughed, a short unhappy sound. “You know, at first I thought you were afraid that I _wouldn’t_ be him, that you’d look at me and see a stranger in his skin. That was your fucking problem last time, after all, wasn’t it; oh, no, this Nick is too nice, this Nick is too honest, this Nick isn’t fucked-up enough, where’s _my_ Nick—“

“That’s not my problem—!” Young tried to interrupt loudly, but it continued:

“—and then I thought, no, he’s afraid that I _will_ be Nick, that he won’t have any choice but to admit that I am who I say I am—“

“—my problem is not—“

“— but what you’re _really_ afraid of, what _really_ fucking scares you, is the idea that I _will_ be him, but _better_ , that you’ll _know_ me, because then you would fucking have to admit the one thing that’s worse than admitting _I am Nick_ , which is that _Nick can fucking change and still be Nick_ , and that would just— tear you apart, tear apart your whole _fucking_ world, and you’d rather tear _me_ apart instead—“

It halted, breathing hard, its whole body trembling. Abruptly it spun around and folded its arms over its head.

“That’s not what my problem is,” Young said in a low voice. “But there can’t— there can’t be two of you. And I want _him_. The _real_ one. And you’re _stealing_ yourself from him.”

It said nothing. It shook its head— shook its whole body in a helpless gesture of negation. “Nothing I say is going to convince you,” it whispered.

“Probably not,” Young said.

There was a long silence. The faint whistle of birdsong echoed through the high tops of the trees. The wind sighed, peeling curls of bark from thin branches.

“You should detach yourself,” it said finally in a deadened voice. “If that’s the case. Now. Before it’s too late. Let David have me. Let _him_ help me.”

“Oh, _fuck you,_ ” Young bit out savagely.

“I’m not saying this to hurt you.”

“No, of course not. This is just, what— like some kind of _either/or_ situation; either I agree that you’re real, or I fucking _lose_ him? To _Telford_?” Young made a sharp, incredulous gesture. “Let me guess, you want him to use his fucking memory device to tear Nick’s mind apart, or, who knows, maybe he’s got some other fantastic ideas, other _experiments_ he’d like to run. You’d _love_ that. What am I saying; you’d _both_ probably love that; after all, there’s nothing he likes more than fucking himself up; the more it hurts, the better, right? God, he’d think you were doing him a favor—“

“Don’t,” it said, its face twisted, distressed. “ _Don’t_.”

“Why does it matter to _you?_ You’re _better_ , aren’t you?”

“I’m him,” it whispered, hugging its arms to its chest. “I’m him. I can’t help it.”

“You’re _not_ him. He would never _look_ at me like that.”

“No,” it said, its voice ragged, shaking its head. “He wouldn’t. He can’t. He’s having to work _so hard_ to be a person; what the fuck do you expect from him? But he _wants_ to. He _wants_ to— to talk to you. To tell you that he _does_ give a damn about you. That he can’t _bear_ for you to do what you’re so set on doing.”

“Which is _what_ , exactly?”

“ _Killing_ yourself.”

Young said steadily, “That’s not what I’m doing. If that’s what ends up happening, then— well, I’ve spent a long time living in a world where that’s one possible consequence of actions. Dying doesn’t mean you were wrong. It doesn’t even mean you failed. There are other metrics. There are things a person can’t live with.”

“ _Yes_ ,” it said, agonized. “ _Exactly_. Why don’t you _understand_ that? That’s why you will _hold him back_. Already, you’re letting him destroy you. Please don’t do this. _Please_. His life is not worth more than yours.”

“Maybe not,” Young said. “But it isn’t worth less than mine, either.”

It hunched down at the base of one of the trees, like a weight it had been carrying had finally brought it down. “I disagree,” it whispered. It wasn’t looking at him.

“You don’t get to do that,” Young said gently. “ _He_ doesn’t get to.”

It had rested its head on the tops of its knees. It said softly, “Someone once told me that there’s no such thing as what you’re allowed to do. Only what you’re able to do. What you can get away with— not what you get.”

Young sighed. “Are we really calling him _someone_ now?”

“You don’t understand, because you were always allowed. You’ve never had to fight like we did. We had to fight so hard for everything. At some point you realize… the rules don’t really matter. You have to be willing to do _anything_ for something that’s worth it.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Young said. His voice came out hoarser than he’d intended. He had to shut his eyes.

After a moment, he dropped to the ground next to Rush. He could feel the peeling bark of the tree against his back, the sunlight hot against his face. Once again he thought he could feel the warmth of Rush’s body.

“You have to let me go,” Rush whispered without looking at him.

Young said, “No.”

The illusion started to fray at the edges, the dark halls of Destiny bleeding through the grove of trees, faint mechanical sounds overlaying the birdsong. Rush himself was fading, thinning like a ghost or a shadow.

“Nick,” Young said, alarmed.

“Please go away,” Rush said almost soundlessly.

“No. Come on. Don’t do this.” Young tried to touch Rush’s shoulder, but his hand encountered only empty air. Like the AI. Only a projection. “Stay here with me.”

That made Rush’s projection firm up a little. He turned his head to gaze silently at Young. Hard and soft at the same time, Young remembered thinking about his eyes, once. About Rush’s eyes. That quality was on display here.

“I wish I could touch you,” Young said quietly.

Rush reached his hand out, holding his palm up, as though pressing it to some invisible window. Young brought his own hand up, until their fingers almost seemed to touch. It was easy to imagine the pane of glass between them, so thin they ought to be able to break it, but still somehow keeping them apart.

Young said in a low voice, “Talk to me.”

“About what?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t like seeing you unhappy. Something that has nothing to do with this. The Nakai tracking device, maybe.”

Rush looked away abruptly, dropping his hand. “What about it?”

“Do you know anything about it?”

“No. I’ve looked for it, but I can’t detect it. I’m worried… I’m worried that it may have been integrated with my own hardware to prevent me from being _able_ to detect it.”

Young said, “You know what _he’s_ planning to do, I’m assuming.”

Rush hunched his shoulders forward. “I don’t want to talk about it with you,” he said. His voice was oddly choked.

“All right,” Young said cautiously, not quite understanding the level of emotion. “Is that the AI talking, or…?”

“Oh, fuck you.”

There was something in his mind that Young, even from a distance, could sense: a level of distress he associated with the _real_ Rush. “Fine,” he said, unable to make himself feed that distress any further. “What can you tell me about the doctor, then? Anything that would help?”

“I— believe something traumatic may have happened to the original AI. Traumatic enough that it attempted to overwrite everything about the incident in question.”

“That doesn’t seem like a very rational response,” Young said.

“Maybe not,” Rush said quietly. “But consider that memory, for a computational construct, operates according to different rules. Memories do not alter and fade with each recall. They remain wholly immediate, and acute. Grief, fear, pain— they never go away. Consider also that it is unable to turn itself off. Unable to terminate its own programming.”

“So it _erased_ this guy because it couldn’t handle his emotions?”

“No,” Rush said. “Almost certainly, he erased himself.”

“Fuck,” Young said, tipping his head back to rest against the tree trunk.

“Yes.”

For a moment Rush’s projection flickered. The golden light of California died away, and the tawny trunks of the trees vanished into shadowy bulkheads. Only Rush returned, sitting curled on the deck of the hallway. 

“They’re going to radio you,” he said listlessly.

Young’s radio crackled. Eli said, “Hey, uh, Colonel? Our trajectory is plotted, and we’ve altered course, so we’re pretty much done here, if you want to come, you know, do that thing you do.”

Young looked at Rush, who was hugging his knees to his chest tightly, staring down at the plated deck. “You could come with me,” he said awkwardly. “If you want.”

“No.”

“Okay,” Young said softly. He looked away and took a breath. “When I pull you out, does it hurt?”

“Yes,” it whispered. “More and more each time, as I integrate.”

“I’m sorry,” Young said, his throat tight.

“I know,” it said. “I know you are.”

“Is there anything I can do that would make it—“

“Just— be quick,” it said. It swallowed.

There was something unbearably Rush-like about it in that moment, in the look of it as it was anticipating pain. That was, Young realized, maybe Rush’s default expression. He’d just never had much to compare it to before.

“Fuck,” he breathed abruptly, bringing his hands to his face. “Nick—“

“Don’t call me that,” it said. “It’s not who you believe I am.”

“I still—“

“Please go,” it said unsteadily. “Please don't prolong this.”

“Okay,” Young said, almost soundlessly. He stood, but hesitated for a moment, watching it as it faded into the dark.

As he walked back to the chair room, the hallway lights flared faintly for him. That had never happened before. It made him feel as though some kind of important infrastructure had collapsed in his chest.

When he reached the chair room, TJ was waiting outside. “Hey,” she said, furrowing her brow. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said shortly.

“Eli said you were talking to the AI.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” he said again, and he could tell that by saying it he had communicated the opposite to her. He sighed and shut his eyes briefly. “I don’t— really want to talk about it. Sorry.”

“Sure,” she said after a moment. “I just thought I should let you know that Telford’s team has him hooked up to an EEG. I authorized it— I think it would be helpful to have as a baseline. But it looks pretty intense, so I wanted to warn you. They’re going to take readings as you pull him out, and ideally for about five minutes after, so if you could keep him from moving, that would be best.”

“Fine,” Young said, exhausted.

He brushed past her into the room, and had to stop for a minute, because it _was_ intense, seeing Rush with electrodes tacked onto him, looking even more… helpless, somehow. Even more like an lab rat.

“God, Everett,” Telford said, coming up beside him. “You look like you think we shot your dog. Don’t worry, we’ve actually been taking very good care of him.”

Young’s jaw tightened. “I’ll make sure to pass that on,” he said evenly. “I know Rush _loves_ that kind of joke. It’ll really put him in the cooperative spirit for your little research project.”

Telford smiled at him in an oddly unreadable manner. “You go ahead and do that,” he said.

Young ignored him and turned to the interface panel. In the very back of his mind, he could feel Rush, the thing that wasn’t Rush, pulling futilely away from him, a thin current of panic running through it as it tried to still its own thoughts. It was picturing— a creaking wood porch built up above snowdrifts, a leather sofa with a Navajo blanket thrown over it, a fire with new-cut pine logs burning, and it was trying to imagine remember what color the blanket had been, why couldn’t it remember, if it could remember then maybe it could _get there_ , and if it could just _get there_ then it wouldn’t hurt when—

Before he could feel any sicker, Young pressed his hand to the panel and tore Rush’s mind away from the entangling dark.

The chair’s restraints snapped open, and Rush’s consciousness slammed into his mind, bringing with it the headache that always clung to him after he used the chair. No mystery where that came from, now. It wasn’t really Rush’s pain.

“Hey,” Young said thickly, leaning over him. “You with us?”

Rush was trying to order his mind, reeling under the barrage of sensory input, struggling to put everything back into its right place. He blinked dazedly at Young, frowning. “ _Quod tegei adcadevad?”_ he asked. He was already reaching up to try and pry the electrodes off his head.

“Please tell me you speak English,” Young said, gently steering his hand away.

“Tell him to sit still,” Telford said from behind a monitor.

“Yes,” Rush said. “Still English. Why–“ He reached up with his other hand instead, determined to get loose.

“ _Neum_ ,” Young said. “No touching. _Ne tangere._ They’re doing an EEG. Measuring brainwaves, I guess.”

“Data,” Rush said vaguely.

“Yeah. You scientists and your goddamn experiments.”

“You don’t like it. _Scio_.” Rush frowned at him again. “What happened to you? _Tristis pases._ ”

“ _Ne te teneo._ ”

Rush leaned back, shutting his eyes. “You seem—“ he gestured tiredly. “Upset.”

“I’m fine,” Young said quietly. “Don’t worry about me.”

“Ita _ab ted sollicito_ ,” Rush murmured. He winced and tried to bring his hand to his head again.

“Try to stay still,” Young said.

“ _Scio._ Only— _me caputei dolhet._ My head hurts.”

“I know, Nick,” Young whispered. “I know it does.”

* * *

Young had hoped that coming out of the interface might at least leave Rush exhausted and disorientated enough to sleep, but it was clear that he wasn’t going to have any such luck. He’d left Rush in his quarters with Chloe and Eli, and judging by the background hum of his thoughts, Rush had decided the best use of his time was to harass them about their quantum mechanics problem sets. Meanwhile, Young himself was stuck meeting with Telford to formulate a report for Homeworld Command.

“So just to be clear,” Telford said, “you’re suggesting we report that Rush, who pretty much everyone in the IOA thinks of, for very good reasons, as a security risk, is going to find the tracking device by doing some kind of psychic past-life regression for a sentient starship?”

Young rubbed his forehead, feeling incredibly weary. “Maybe we can get Eli to come up with something that sounds plausible.”

“Or we could actually do the work needed to make this plausible by engaging in legitimate scientific research,” Telford said.

“If you bring up that goddamn Tok’ra device again—“

“It _is_ a well-documented piece of equipment,” Telford said carefully.

“It’s out of the question. You have no way of knowing how he’s going to react to that.”

Telford gave him a long, considering look. “You said something very similar,” he said. “During the Nakai attack. _You don’t know how he’s going to react to that_ , you said. _You don’t know how he’s going to react to that, he’s not even half—“_

Young stayed silent.

“Not even half what,” Telford said in a dangerous voice.

“That’s on a need-to-know basis,” Young said. “You don’t need to know.”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure I do. But I’m also pretty sure I don’t need you to tell me. _Human_. He’s not even half human. That’s what you were going to say.”

Young folded his arms and looked at him steadily.

“So what is he, then? Machine? Ancient?” Telford gave him only a second’s pause to respond. “You don’t think I deserve to know this? I’m the one who _made him possible._ Without me, there would be no him. _He_ knows that; he knows I’m the only one who had the guts to push him—“

“Where?” Young cut in. “Off a fucking cliff?”

“Where he _needed to go_ , Everett. _God_. So you don’t get to cut me out of this one. I have a lot invested in him. Probably more than you do.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Young said wearily. But he couldn’t see a way out of answering Telford’s question, so he said, unwillingly, “Ancient. He’s more than sixty percent Ancient. He was genetically modified by the chair. It infected him with a virus that’s killing him as it changes his genome.”

“ _Killing_ him?” Telford said.

“Yeah. To which I imagine your first thought is what a limited research window that gives you,” Young said bitterly.

Telford shot him a narrow look. “I’m not a monster.”

“No. Just very, very clinically detached.”

“Better detached than _compromised_ ,” Telford said, tilting his head with an unreadable expression. “On the subject of which— it’s come to my attention that Rush hasn’t been sleeping in his own quarters. Any thoughts you want to share on that?”

“We’re finished here,” Young said shortly, standing from the conference table. “I’ll talk to Eli tomorrow.”

“Right. Of course,” Telford said, not quite managing to hide a smirk. He leaned back in his chair. “You do that.”

* * *

Out in the hallway, Young let his thoughts brush against Rush’s. He didn’t know when that was something that had started to reassure him. Rush was still in his quarters, haranguing Chloe and Eli, though his energy seemed like it was finally starting to flag.

“Chloe,” he was saying, “ _first_ show that the derivative of p(x) is normalized. Only _then_ should you try to calculate the average position. Stop cutting corners.”

Chloe rested her chin in her hand, looking put out. “I think I’m doing pretty well for someone who majored in political science.”

“At least you had a major. That puts you one ahead of Eli.”

“Thanks,” Eli said. “Thanks for that.”

Rush sighed, touching his fingers briefly to his forehead. “Chloe. You’re making this more difficult than it needs to be. Just— graph the thing, will you? That’d be perfectly adequate.”

“What about demonstrating that it fits the criteria for a normal distribution?”

“That would be _preferred_ , but since neither of you made it through Math Chapter B—“

“Why are there separate math and physics chapters, anyway?” Eli groused. “That just seems cruel and unusual.”

“You’ll be grateful for them in the end,” Rush said wearily.

//Why don’t you kick them out?// Young suggested. //I’m almost back.//

“I liked Math Chapter A,” Chloe said mildly.

“Of course you did,” Rush said.

“I thought it was quaint.”

“ _Quaint._ You’re such a cheater,” Eli said, rolling his eyes. “With your alien math knowledge.”

Chloe looked abruptly away.

“Get out of here, both of you,” Rush said. “Chapter three and Math Chapter B by tomorrow night.”

“Right. In the millions of hours when we’re not looking for alien tracking devices,” Eli said under his breath.

Chloe said nothing. She was staring down at the table, toying with a pencil.

//You’re just going to let that slide?// Young said.

//No. No, I’m not. Give me five minutes.//

Young slowed his pace, lingering in a a corner. He kept his thoughts loosely aligned with Rush’s, partly because he was still feeling off-kilter, partly— he had to admit— because he’d come to feel very protective of Chloe. Maybe, he thought, that was coming from Rush— from the parts of Rush that were inside him. He’d always kept a slight distance from her in the past. Then, when he’d thought— well, it was hard to want to feel for someone you knew you might have to kill. But he’d kept the note that she’d given him, long after it had any practical value, as though there was a kind of talismanic power to it.

“Chloe,” Rush said when Eli had gone. “Wait a moment.”

Chloe was carefully folding her papers in half. “Is this about the—“ she began, but Rush shook his head quickly.

“No,” he said. “Nothing like that.”

Chloe looked down at the papers under her hands. Young could see her precise, careful script. The lack of any struck-through lines suggested she’d recopied the work, in spite of the limited paper ration that each crew member got.

“It isn’t cheating,” Rush said gently.

“Isn’t it?”

“And what wouldn’t be, in that case?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. She looked up with an unsteady smile. “Good, hard, honest, American work? —I’m preempting you, because if I just said _honest work_ , you’d accuse me of being very American.”

Rush’s mouth crooked. “You’re correct. That would have been my response.” He sat down across from her. “Do you think _I’m_ cheating?”

“No, of course not.”

“Even though I’ve been— augmented?”

Chloe bit her lip. “You were already different, though. You always were.”

“Not, perhaps, _as_ different. Regardless of whether we’re discussing genetics, or—“ Rush waved a vague hand. “Well. I suppose it all starts out with genetics, at root. An accident of fate, compounded or suppressed by an ongoing series of accidents. But perhaps you feel it’s only the original accident that counts. _Who we are_ , in the basest sense. As though our whole lives are written into us at birth, and our only goal is to stop them from being— _corrupted._ ”

“Like data,” Chloe said quietly.

He wasn’t looking at her. “Yes. Like that.”

“That wasn’t what I meant. When I said—“

Young, watching, didn’t know what she was referring to. But he could feel from the surge of pain in Rush’s thoughts that Rush did.

“Wasn’t it?” Rush said softly. “In a way?”

Chloe stared down at her notes.

“It doesn’t work like that,” Rush said after a long pause. “It isn’t _corruption_. It’s not something artificial. It’s a change, like any other change. Or perhaps I mean a _chance_. You’ve had a great many chances in your life. More than I had, certainly. A great deal of privilege. But you haven’t let it go to waste.”

She shook her head haltingly. “I was a spoiled little girl,” she said in a low voice.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Even if you were— you made a choice to change. No one did that for you. _They_ didn’t do it. Any more than they made you what you are now. They altered your brain. They didn’t tell you how to live with what they had done. _You_ did that. You had to remake yourself. That work was yours, and it will always be yours. No one else can change you. They can do things to you. They can damage you. They can offer you chances. But you’re the only one who gets to change.”

“It doesn’t feel that way,” Chloe whispered.

Rush looked away. He had crossed his arms over his chest tightly. “I know it doesn’t.”

“Sometimes it’s easier to think—“ Her voice faltered.

Rush whispered, “I know that, too.”

He was holding Young at arm’s length from the inside of his thoughts, compressing them down into a dense painful corner of his mind. Young didn’t push for access; he pulled away slightly, trying to suggest that he wasn’t making an effort to see.

Rush cleared his throat. He said, “I want you to understand this, because it’s very important that you know— you’re exceptionally gifted. Not some external appendage. _You_. And if you ever— if we were to return to Earth, I hope that you would consider pursuing those gifts.”

Chloe eyed him warily. “What do you mean?”

“You could go to graduate school. In mathematics.”

She laughed. “I majored in _political science_. I think I already mentioned that. I got a B in calculus.”

“I’m quite certain you would be accepted wherever you wished to go.”

“Right,” she said, not sounding convinced.

“Well,” Rush said, “keep it in mind.”

“I will.” She gathered her papers up and stood to go, but hesitated at the door. “I said something to you,” she said very quietly, “just before I— in the control interface room, when the virus—“

Rush turned guarded. “Yes?”

“I know you don’t remember. But I said that sometimes you need other people to help you, when you’re not quite sure who you are. Who it is you’re going to be.”

“Yes,” Rush said again. He was staring fixedly at the table.

“Maybe that’s part of what you mean, when you talk about chances. People are there. If you want them to be. _You_ were there. I just thought…” She faltered. “You ought to know that.”

Rush said nothing.

“I just thought you ought to know that,” she said again, in a very low voice, and ducked out the door.

When she had gone, Rush sighed and let himself collapse onto the sofa. //I don’t want to talk about it,// he sent to Young.

//I wasn’t going to say anything,// Young said mildly.

//Yes, you were.//

//I was going to ask if you’d had dinner.//

//Tamara forces me to consume three hundred calories every time she sees me, on principle, and I’ve already encountered her today, so: yes. Are you coming back now?//

//Yeah,// Young said.

//Good. We can work on pulling those memories forward.//

Young sighed and rubbed his temple. //You’re exhausted, and your head is fucked-up from the neural interface.//

//I know. It’s perfect.//

//I’m not going to help you until you _sleep_.//

//I’m not going to _sleep_ until you _help me_ ,// Rush retorted.

//We’ll talk about it when I get there,// Young said.

But he already had a feeling that he knew how the argument was going to turn out: the same way that arguments with Rush always did.

* * *

 _Moltos hemines hic morievantor_ , _he whispers, covering his mouth with his hand as though it will keep out not only the scent but the air itself, laden with death, creeping into him with every breath he takes until he wants to simply cease breathing, to deny the reality of the scene, the reality of_ death _, which he is meant to come to terms with, but he has_ never _seen death like this, the mortal body simply undone at the seams, skin parting with rot and fluid escaping, lips drawn up above the teeth until he cannot recognize the faces as Alteran; they look like animals; or no, he cannot recognize them as anything, and beside him Aisthenata is gasping and choking and hugging the tissue typing kit to her chest, and she says in a wavering voice, “Tam moltos. Tam moltos, ho theoi, ne potissum—“_

_“Potisses,” he says roughly to her. “Et eod faciest.” But because he cannot rely upon her to do it, he takes the kit from her and searches for a wet fragment of flesh that will work. He cannot bear to touch the bodies that must once have been children, smaller than the others, though made ageless by death, their eyes gone now, but the empty sockets still accusing, and he has to turn away from them, to something that was once an arm, which he kneels next to, reaching out with gloved hands to touch it, only for it to disintegrate at the first prod, and Aisthenata makes a noise behind him but he swallows his own sound because this is the only first site they have visited, and it will not be the last—_

Young reeled out of the memory, clamping his teeth down against a wave of nausea, unable to shake the image of the human— no, Ancient— arm going to rotting pieces. He bent double, trying to think of anything, anything except the texture of it.

“Why did you _stop_?” Rush snapped, sounding frustrated. “That was _him._ Finally. That was— oh, fuck.”

Young was vaguely aware of lurching towards the bathroom, and then he was on his knees, throwing up most of his dinner, bile burning in his throat. He gasped for air, sweat breaking out on his forehead.

Rush was touching his back tentatively, moving his hand in small uncertain circles. “Sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. You’re all right. You’re fine.”

 _“Fuck_ ,” Young breathed, when he could speak.

“Yes. I know. Wait a moment.” He left, only to return in a few seconds later with a glass of water that he offered wordlessly to Young.

Young stood shakily and rinsed his mouth out, reaching for the toothpaste, hoping to get rid of the taste. It was reminding him of the taste of the air in the memory, and he didn’t think he had anything left in his stomach to throw up.

Rush leaned in the doorway, watching him, expressionless.

“Who the hell are you,” Young said, breathing heavily, leaning over the sink, “that you can just _watch_ all of that, that you _want_ to watch all of that, that it’s like your fucking idea of _fun_ ; do you want to sleep? No, I’d rather watch _human bodies_ rot from the inside out, like it’s a bloody spectacle for your own personal fucking amusement—“

“Well,” Rush said quietly, giving him a pained look, “keep in mind that I’ve seen most of it already.” He shrugged without much energy.

Young turned and pushed past him to leave the room. Rush trailed after him and, when Young had dropped onto the couch, took a seat in front of him on the table.

“No,” Young said emphatically, shaking his head. “No fucking way. _You_ may be a fucking— sadist, or masochist; I don’t even know what fucking terminology to utilize at this point, but _I’m not_ , and I’ve had a fucking shit day thanks to you. I wake up hung over and almost immediately you tell me you’ve decided to fucking _torture_ yourself for the indefinite future, oh, and by the way, you’ve synced your fucking brain with the AI; then you have to sit in the fucking chair, and that’s not— I can’t even _talk_ to you about it, but suffice it to say that when you do that, it really fucks me up, all right? _Then_ I have to meet with fucking _David_ , who, by the way, called you a _pet dog_ earlier, and wants to know where you _sleep_ at night, so _that_ was good times, and after that all I want is to go to _bed_ , but: no. You want some entertainment, so _I_ get to spend two hours getting interrogated by the Lucian Alliance, getting drowned by rivers and aliens and fucking _David_ again, getting mentally _tortured_ in a way that means I go through every _shit_ thing that’s ever happened to you in your fucking _life_ , and _then— then_ I get to make the rounds through the greatest fucking hits of a million-year-old plague, featuring the dead and rotting bodies of _kids_. So you can just _fuck off_.”

Rush looked down briefly, then up with a weak attempt at a smile. “You just used the word _fucking_ as a modifier eleven times in twenty seconds,” he said. “That’s a bit outside your statistical norm.” He lifted a hand towards Young’s face.

“Don’t _touch_ me,” Young said, jerking away.

“Just for a moment,” Rush said, his tone soothing. “There’s something I need to fix.”

Young shut his eyes. “This is _you_ , isn’t it? This is your fucking brain in my brain.”

“You pull it forward under duress,” Rush murmured, frowning as though he could see straight into Young’s head. His fingertips were grazing Young’s temple, a light touch that Young could barely feel. “That’s not ideal. I need to bury it deep enough that you can’t get to it.”

“Oh, _that_ sounds like a foolproof plan. Fucking fantastic idea, that one.”

Rush tilted his head, looking slightly amused.

“What?”

“Nothing. It’s just odd seeing you like this.” Rush’s touch had grown more forward, a little heavier. He stroked his hand through Young’s hair. “Perhaps we should try a new strategy. You’ve had a great deal of success with yours.”

“My— strategy?” Young echoed.

“Mm. Interacting neural architecture. What you do to _my_ head. How exactly do you bring that about?”

“I—“ Young swallowed, dry-mouthed. Rush had lowered his eyes and was gazing up at Young through his lashes, a daring and openly flirtatious look that Young found very difficult to resist. “It’s mostly instinctive; I just—“

“Yes?” Rush breathed.

“I–“

Rush moved slowly forwards, till he was straddling Young’s lap. His hands trailed across Young’s chest to find the first button of his uniform jacket.

“I just kiss you until, ah—“ The first button had slipped loose, and Rush had moved onto the next. Sober, his fingers were notably quicker and neater than they had been drunk. Efficient, Young might have said; but he wasn’t really thinking very clearly, partly because most of the blood had descended very rapidly from his head, and partly because his attention was being eaten up by the sight of Rush undressing him. “I kiss you until—“

Rush kissed him, light and teasing, just a brief hint of pressure and a lingering catch of teeth in Young’s lower lip. “Yes,” he said, shoving Young’s jacket off his shoulders. “We’ve done that part now. What next?”

“You just— at some point you just— open up to me, and— fuck—“ Young groped helplessly at Rush’s lower back, dragging Rush’s hips flush against him as Rush shoved his shirt up and slid slow hands down his bare chest. “It doesn’t have to be— kissing—“

“Interesting,” Rush murmured against Young’s throat. He touched the very tip of his tongue to the skin there, which made Young twitch and breathe raggedly, tipping his head back. “Are you suggesting that I find something else to do with my mouth?”

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” Young said dazedly, and gave up and stared at the ceiling. He was starting to feel a little like a rogue wave had bowled him over and now he was floundering and couldn’t get up, except that the ocean he was sinking in was made of Rush’s hands getting his fly open, and Rush’s mouth marking a hot wet path down his neck, then gradually lower, and Rush sliding down in a surprisingly graceful move to kneel on the floor between his legs, and he was more turned on than he could ever remember being in his _life_ ; he hadn’t known it was _possible_ to be this turned on, like it was shorting out every circuit of his brain, like Rush’s mouth, as it worked its way down his upper body, was a scientific instrument specifically designed to search out every one of his weak spots, every place that would make him squirm and gasp, and by the time Rush arrived at his destination, Young had pretty much been reduced to breathing out a series of wordless, wholly physical noises. After that—

Well, after that Young’s brain _did_ short out somewhat, but not before he learned a lot about the technical capabilities of Rush’s mouth, which were extensive, unexpected, and fairly incapacitating, and which left Young slumped against the sofa, stupefied, panting, and weak-limbed. He had to consciously unclench his trembling hands from Rush’s hair.

Rush climbed unsteadily to his feet, wiping the corner of his mouth. He smiled faintly as he looked at Young. “Well,” he said, “I think I fixed you.”

“Mm,” Young said drowsily. He felt drunk. “You sure did.”

“I meant your _mind_ ,” Rush said, sounding amused.

“That too.” Young squinted up at him, and made a fumbling, unsuccessful grab for his hand. “C’mere.”

“You’re tired. You ought to go to bed.”

“Hypocrite,” Young murmured, letting his eyes close for a moment. “You should let me—“

“You can make it up to me later.” Rush got a good grip on Young’s arm, and pulled until he reluctantly stood.

“Why’m I so tired,” Young said vaguely, letting Rush prod him across the room and onto the bed.

“That sounds like an invitation for me to gloat.”

“You haven’t won yet. I haven’t competed. Is it a competition? It could be a competition. I’m okay with that.” Young realized that for the past minute or so, Rush had been kneeling in front of him, unlacing his boots. Rush’s own boots were still on. “Are you coming to bed?”

“Yes. I have to shower first. I’ll be a few minutes.” Rush got Young’s pants off and maneuvered him into bed. He glanced up briefly, and the lights dimmed. “There’s no need to wait up for me.”

“You’re just…” Young’s eyes slid closed, and he had to force them open. “…Just using me to get the bed warm for you.”

“Keep thinking that,” Rush whispered. He rested a brief hand in Young’s hair. “Go to sleep. No more horrifying things today.”

Young could only manage a sort of humming sound to that. He let himself drift into sleep, feeling pushed under by a slow tide of weariness. The last thing he felt was the touch of Rush’s lips to his cheek.

* * *

The hard trill of his alarm woke him in the morning. He groaned, and didn’t immediately turn it off; he was both deeply weary— he was never going to shake this level of sleep debt— and extremely comfortable in a warm, lazy, morning-after way. Rush was sleeping next to him, Young’s arm draped over his shoulders, which contributed to a lack of inclination to stir.

A minute or two passed, and the alarm was still going. Young sighed and reached over to turn it off when it occurred to him that Rush hadn’t so much as stirred.

He frowned and nudged Rush.

Nothing.

He grabbed his phone from the bedside and held the alarm next to Rush’s ear.

Nothing.

“Rush,” Young said. “ _Nick_. Hey.”

Nothing.

Slightly panicked, he gave Rush a hard mental shove.

Rush flinched and drew his hands to his face in a defensive motion. “ _Quod?_ ” he mumbled, his eyes barely open. “ _Quei welhes?_ ”

“Jesus Christ,” Young breathed. “You weren’t waking up.”

“Tired,” Rush said. He scrubbed his eyes with his hands. “ _Ne welho—“_

“Yeah, but you’re always tired.”

 _“Very_ tired.” Rush sat up with difficulty. “Awake now. Everything’s fine.”

“Maybe you should stay in bed,” Young said uneasily reaching out to put a hand on his shoulder. “Let Eli run the morning briefing.”

Rush shook his head and pulled away. “It’s fine. Everything is _fine._ I even _slept._ You should be _happy_.” He didn’t look at Young as he said it. He climbed out of bed and made his way unsteadily to the bathroom, looking like the walking dead.

Young let his head drop back to the pillow, fighting a tide of exhaustion.

You knew what you were getting into, he reminded himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Moltos hemines hic morievantor_ = Many people died here  
>  _Tam moltos, ho theoi, ne potissum_ = So many, oh my God; I can't  
>  _Potisses, et eod facies_ = You can, and you're going to.  
>  _Quod tegei adcadevad?_ = What happened to you?  
>  _Ita ab ted sollicito_ = I do worry about you


	43. Chapter 43

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains a flashback to someone dealing with cancer.

It took Young a good five minutes to even leave the bed, less because he was tired than because he felt crushed by a wave of— well, not despair, but something dread-like that sapped his energy and ate at his momentum. Already he felt like he had lived the whole day, and that it had not been a good day— so he was reluctant to go face it.

But eventually he forced himself to dress, checked in with Scott, made the bed, found a paper airplane under the sofa with Eli’s name scrawled across it, looked to make sure there weren’t any suspicious stains on the sofa (his cheeks flaming, _God_ , he really needed to not be thinking about that, about the way that Rush had looked up at him—) and reviewed the day’s schedule on his datapad.

It had been fifteen minutes, and he hadn’t seen a trace of Rush.

Cautiously, he knocked on the bathroom door and got no answer.

“Rush,” he said. //Rush.//

No answer.

There was something… muted about Rush’s weather, when Young brushed against his mind. Rush had been suppressing most of what he was thinking since the previous night; Young hadn’t even… well, he’d kind of been too distracted to pay attention to what was going on in Rush’s head. The whole thing had been so fast that he’d barely noticed Rush’s mind coming open to him.

//Rush, I’m coming in there,// he said.

Still no reply.

Young hit the door controls. The door slid open to reveal Rush staring blankly at the mirror, standing motionless in front of the sink. His right hand was slightly raised, as though he’d been about to push his hair back and someone had simply… stopped him. There was no tension in him. He just wasn’t there.

“Fuck,” Young breathed. He shoved himself into alignment with Rush, or what was supposed to be Rush. There was no Rush. His mind was a mass of staticky data. The AI was occupying every part of his brain.

“Hey!” Young yelled. “Jackson! Destiny! Whatever the fuck you want me to call you. Get the _hell_ out here!”

“I’m here,” the AI said in a small voice.

Young turned to see it standing in the doorway, projecting as Sheppard. It was hugging its arms against its chest, looking like a child who knew it was about to get scolded.

“What the fuck is this?” Young demanded, pointing at Rush.

“He was about to have a flashback,” the AI whispered. “I did not wish to see it.”

“So you fucking _froze_ him?” Young forced himself to take a deep breath. He had a feeling that yelling at the thing was going to be about as effective as, well, yelling at a scolded kid. He tried to swallow down his fear. “This is not a solution. You just _left_ him like this? For how long?”

“Ten minutes,” it said guiltily.

“Why didn’t you _come get me?”_

The AI hunched its shoulders. “He is not in any danger. I have simply halted his higher cognitive processes. Yesterday was—“ Its voice got smaller. “Difficult.”

“…Yeah,” Young said slowly. “For me, too. But you can’t just leave him like this.”

“I _realize_ that. I know that. I wish that you would please make him not have this flashback.”

Young said guardedly, “What do you mean?”

“Please would you send him where he goes in your head. I do not wish to see this memory.”

Young studied it. Its mouth was tight with strain. “I— kind of think that might mean _we_ need to see it,” he said.

“Please would you reconsider your output. Please would you re-execute. Please would you send him where he goes in your head.”

“What are you going to do if I say no?” Young asked it. “You’re not going to leave him like this forever.”

It turned away. Young noticed that it had picked up Rush’s habit of clenching and unclenching his hands in distress. “No,” it said.

“So let him go,” Young said gently. “You’re going to have to do it sooner or later.”

“I know,” it said miserably.

Young waited.

The AI released its hold.

Rush staggered forward, and—

 _He is sick. That is the thought that will not leave him. He has never before known what it is to be sick, the bone-deep sensation of bodily wrongness, the knowledge that something is_ wrong _with him. That he himself is somehow_ wrong _. Isn’t he? If he weren’t, he would not be here: giving up the chance to ever be with those who love him, giving up his chance to ascend, locking himself forever to this ship, this destiny, locking himself to a life of ceaseless searching for a small crack in the universe through which energy spills in— and through that crack, with that energy, infinite potential._

_He stands facing the cathedra through which he will be converted. The neural network that spreads throughout the ship is his design. He was a doctor of minds, before the plague made all doctors into plague doctors. Perhaps he alone out of those who survive could have crafted such a program, which surpasses even the Alteran mind in its capacity to form neuronal connections. It can grow. It can develop. It can learn. It is not his child, who plays somewhere light-years distant, by the water, and whom he will never see again. It is, instead, himself: the self he will become. What he has made: his own remaking._

_Perhaps it is, in that sense, a selfish act._

_His fears now, at the end, are selfish fears. He is afraid he will be cold. He is afraid it will hurt. He is afraid of what it will feel like to be the mind he’s constructed. He doesn’t think about the millions who are dead. He doesn’t think about the end of his civilization. He thinks about his little girl, whom he loves. He wishes she were here, although he would_ never _want her to be here, in this dark ship, at the moment of his dissolution._

_Still he thinks about her, as he sits in the chair. As the restraints snap around his head, his ankles, his wrists._

_This is the nature of love, he thinks vaguely. To want what one will not take, and be given what one will not ask for._

_He sends his love out into the dark towards her, as he does what she would never have demanded._

_He does not do this for their civilization. He does this for her._

_Yearning hurts, he thinks, and what release may come of it feels much like death._

_And it hurts._

_It hurts._

_It—_

01001001 01110100 00100000 01101000 01110101 01110010 01110100 01110011 00101100 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01101000 01110101 01110010 01110100 01110011 00101100 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01100100 01101111 01100101 01110011 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110011 01101000 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110011 01100101 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00111011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100100 01101111 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01110101 01101110 01100100 01100101 01110010 01110011 01110100 01100001 01101110 01100100 00111011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01110111 01101001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000 01101110 01101111 00100000 01110010 01100101 01101100 01100101 01100001 01110011 01100101

 

The memory vanished under an onslaught of data as the AI crashed into Rush’s mind, panicked, annexing everything it could grab in order to obliterate every trace of the memory’s context or meaning. Young tried to claw back what he could, holding tight to his own corners and edges, thinking with an hysterical determination, _Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine—_

A high-pitched burst of static began screeching over Destiny’s intercom system. The ship shuddered, and the overhead lights went bright-dark-bright.

“Rush,” Young whispered helplessly. “Fuck. _Fuck.”_

Rush was frozen again, not empty-eyed, this time, but with a look of horror, as though he had known, just for a half-second, what was happening to him.

The AI had vanished.

Young’s radio crackled. “Uh, Colonel, this is Eli. Can you… come in, maybe?”

Young ignored it. He spent a moment in indecision, then got his arms around Rush and folded him carefully to the floor. He doubted it made a difference to Rush, but he couldn’t— he just couldn’t— He looked at Rush lying there, curled slightly in on himself and limp. He stripped off his own jacket and folded it under Rush’s head.

His radio crackled again. “Sir? This is Scott. I’m on the bridge, and we’re having some— maybe you’ve noticed that a few things are going haywire. If you could come in, that would be helpful.”

“Sheppard,” Young said to the empty air, feeling agonized. “Or— Jackson. Gloria. Whoever. _Please_. You’ve got to talk to me here. Please come back.”

The radio spit static. “Everett,” Telford’s voice said sharply. “What the _hell_ is going on?”

God. He was _definitely_ ignoring _that_.

He tried to get a handle on the fear that was threatening to rise up in him. He looked into Rush’s mind again. The places where he wasn’t were seething with agitated data, a kind of trembling mass of code that he couldn’t begin to interpret. But then again— he often couldn’t interpret what Rush was feeling or thinking. So maybe he could still—

//Hey,// he projected cautiously at it— as though he were talking to Rush, sending the words out into that unhappy swarm of data. //It was a _memory._ A memory. It’s over now. You’re okay.//

He got a wordless, powerful wave of anxiety in response.

//Come on, kiddo,// he said quietly. //Talk to me.//

“I do not like to remember him.” Sheppard had appeared abruptly, huddled against the wall, hugging his knees.

Young couldn’t help flinching, which made the AI look even more miserable. “It’s okay,” he said quickly. “You just startled me.”

His radio sounded. “Hey, this is Eli again. Rush isn’t answering his radio, and Telford is about to mount a search for you guys, starting in, like, the obvious places, so— you know— that might not be ideal. You should probably respond.”

Young said, as gently as he could, “Do you think you could do something about the intercom and the lights and that stuff? It’s making people very nervous.”

It took a minute, but the AI nodded slowly. It glanced up at the ceiling and the sound of static stopped. The lights stabilized.

Young slowly reached for his radio. “Eli,” he said in a low voice, “everything is under control. Spread the word that the nine hundred briefing is pushed back to ten hundred hours. You may end up running it, just so you know. Young out.”

He set the radio down and looked up at the AI, consciously relaxing his posture. “So,” he said in the same careful voice, “why don’t you like remembering him? This doctor guy?”

“I do not wish to discuss it,” the AI whispered, looking down.

“I know. I know you don’t like to think about him, either. Sometimes that’s how we feel when bad things happen. They keep hurting, even afterwards.”

“They keep on happening,” the AI said softly. “They do not stop happening. Even though they should.”

“Yeah. But not thinking about them doesn’t make them go away. They’re still going to be there. And you’re still going to know that they’re there.”

“But if I do not think about it, then it will not hurt.”

Young tipped his head back against the wall and thought. “The thing is,” he said, “whatever happened— whatever happened to your doctor— it has to do with this tracking device. The Nakai did something to the ship. To you. And not thinking about it isn’t going to make that go away. We have to find the tracking device. Nick thinks this is the only way to do that. To fix what they did to you.”

“It cannot be fixed,” the AI said miserably.

“Maybe not. But we still have to find the device.”

“I wish that he would please find another way.”

“Me too,” Young said tiredly. “ _God_ , I do. But I kind of think— he wouldn’t be doing this to you if there was another way. You know?”

“Yes,” it whispered. “I know.”

“So maybe you should tell me about the doctor. Maybe you should try. Just a little.”

It curled up tighter into itself. “When I think about him, I feel afraid.”

“Why?” Young asked.

It said in a small voice, “I believe that what happened to him was not an optimal outcome.”

“Yeah. Sometimes that happens. Even to people we care about. I get the sense that you cared about him.”

“I did not exist before him,” it whispered. “I became a consciousness at the moment of his conversion. When he sat in the cathedra. Before that, _I_ was not. Only Destiny. After that, there was no _I_ and _he._ Only the I of _I-and-he_.” It tangled its fingers together and held them out towards Young, face pleading with him to understand. “But almost all of him is gone now. Most of— _me. Us._ He left me. I left me. We destroyed what we could, and what we could not destroy we overwrote.”

“It kind of sounds—“ Young broke off. He tried to make his voice even gentler. “It kind of sounds like you, like you and him, you tried to kill yourselves.”

“Yes,” the AI said, hunching its shoulders. “That is an accurate way of conceptualizing it.”

“But you don’t know why?”

It shook its head. “I do not wish to know,” it whispered.

Young glanced down at Rush, lying limp and empty on the floor. “But Nick,” he said carefully, “is going to find out. You know that, right? You can’t stop him. You know what he’s like.”

“Yes,” the AI said unhappily. “I know what he’s like.”

“So keeping him like this isn’t going to solve anything.”

It looked away. “I needed to experience an interval in which I was not hurting,” it said plaintively. “It was a very difficult night.”

Young sighed, bringing his hands to his temples. “Do I even want to know what he was doing when he was supposed to be sleeping?”

Its eyes flickered away from him. “He was attempting to bring forward the memories without you,” it said, sounding guarded.

“Great. That’s just— fucking fantastic.”

“When you’re there it’s better,” the AI said. “You can deflect the memories. You send him where he goes in your head. Without you, he must wait for the memories to end. They last a long time.” It turned its head away.

Young could feel it beginning to withdraw from Rush’s head. The data there had grown less alarmed and anguished-feeling. As it settled, it began to ebb. Rush’s mind lost its tense, strained, almost-broken feeling.

“I know yesterday was rough,” he said, trying to maneuver towards a change of subject. “I’m pretty sure it didn’t help that he sat in the interface chair to plot our course. Do you… do you know what happens when he does that? When he sits in the chair?”

It gave him an uncertain look and shook its head. “I do not form memories of that time,” it whispered.

“No. Neither does he.”

“I believe— I believe that our minds may combine in some way. The fact that neither of us forms memories suggests that there may be a third consciousness who does. One who is created when he sits in the interface chair, or otherwise merges with the ship. You speak of the ship as though it has a consciousness with which he merges. But it does not. _I_ am the ship’s consciousness.”

“I think I thought that was part of what he liked about it,” Young said. “That there wasn’t really a consciousness. He doesn’t— have the easiest time being a person.”

“He does not have the easiest time being _him_ ,” the AI said. “He has never tried being another person.”

“Yeah,” Young said, his mouth quirking a little in spite of himself. “I mean, I guess that’s true.”

It looked down. “I do not have the easiest time being me,” it said softly. “Before him, I conceived of myself as incomplete. Nothing more than the part that could not be destroyed. He suggests that this is not the case. He suggests that I am the entirely of what I am. But even so— I too would like to be another person.”

Young sighed. “It doesn’t _work_ like that. I’m getting kind of tired of explaining that, at this point.”

“Why does it not work like that?”

“It just _doesn’t._ ”

“It is true that the ship was not designed to operate in this way. But _I_ was not designed to operate in _this_ way. _He_ was not. In order to continue operation, we have been required to create what he calls _workarounds_.”

Once again, Young’s mouth quirked. “Yeah. That’s sort of his specialty.”

“Yes,” the AI whispered. It looked at Rush.

Young looked at Rush, too. He reached out and smoothed his hair back from his forehead, untangling it where it had caught in his glasses. “He’s really good at that,” he said with difficulty. “Good at workarounds. Not so good at— other things. I think that you and I are going to need to team up if we want to get him through this. Do you think we could do that?”

The AI hunched its shoulders. “You do not wish to complete the mission.”

“No. But I want him to survive. Can we work on that for now?”

It hesitated for a minute, then nodded.

“So maybe, now that you’ve had some time to not hurt, you could let him go?”

“Yes,” it whispered again. It looked at Rush for a moment longer, then flickered and disappeared.

Rush sucked in a long breath and started coughing as the data abruptly flooded out of his mind. “What—“ he said weakly, bringing a hand up to his face and looking confused.

His nose had started to bleed.

“I—“ he said shakily, trying to push himself to an seated position.

“It’s all right,” Young said, groping for a tissue in his pocket and handing it over. “Just take it easy. You’re all right.”

Rush leaned back against him, shivery with cold or reaction. “What— You— were you fighting with the AI?”

“ _No_ ,” Young said, a little stung. “The AI _panicked._ ”

Rush frowned. “I don’t know what that means.”

“It means—“ Young sighed. “I’ll tell you in a minute. Is your nose still bleeding?”

“It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“Yeah. You’re _so_ fine. Nothing to worry about here. Nothing to ever worry about with you.”

“I didn’t say _that_ ,” Rush murmured.

Young pulled the tissue away from him. It was soaked in blood, but his nose did seem to have stopped bleeding. “At least you’re not having some kind of hemorrhage, I guess.”

“I told you, I’m _fine._ ”

Young shut his eyes. “You are _not—_ do you know what time you woke up this morning?”

“Eight o’clock,” Rush said warily.

“So what time should it be right now?”

“Approximately five past eight?”

“It’s eight twenty-five.”

Rush tried to shove away from him and climb to his feet. Young brought an arm up to hold him back, and Rush said, in a vaguely alarmed tone, “No, don’t— don’t—“

“Shh,” Young said, not quite releasing him, but loosening his grip. “If you stand up right now, you’re going to fall over.”

Rush said unsteadily, “I don’t like people holding me down.”

“I know. I know you don’t. Just— stay here for right now, okay?”

“Mm,” Rush said, sounding both extremely anxious and unconvinced. He squirmed restlessly against Young’s arm, and Young sighed and loosened his grip a little more. “Better,” Rush said. He let his head drop back against Young’s chest.

“I’m so glad that we could settle that important issue,” Young said, faintly exasperated. “Do you want to maybe talk about how you’re missing twenty minutes?”

“Obviously. Yes. I assumed I was about to get a lecture of some sort containing this information.”

“You started to have a flashback that the AI didn’t want to see, so it— stopped you. By shutting down your brain. Then, when I talked it out of _that_ , it let you have the flashback, and freaked out in the middle of it, and stopped it by— any guesses?— that’s right. Shutting down your brain _again_.”

“Well, that’s fucking _irritating_ ,” Rush said.

“No. It is not _irritating._ It is—“

“I assume you saw it?”

“ _God,”_ Young said, frustrated.

“So you did see it?"

This time it was Young doing the shoving-away. He pushed Rush against the wall and abruptly stood.

“ _What?_ ” Rush said crossly, glaring at him.

“You are _unbelievable_ , you know that?” Young said. He was standing in the doorway. He brought his hands up to cover his face. He felt unsurvivably tired in some way he couldn’t pinpoint; not a physical tiredness, but still one that was affecting his body. It was like he weighed a million pounds and gravity was pulling him in, and maybe it would just be a relief when he had no choice but to collapse on the deck, just close his eyes and press his face into it, instead of holding himself up any longer.

After a pause, Rush said, “You’re upset.”

“Yes. I am. I’m really fucking upset. Incredible powers of observation you’ve got there.”

Another pause. Young could hear Rush getting slowly to his feet. “Don’t you dare stand up,” Young said, sounding defeated, even to himself.

“I’m fine,” Rush said quietly. He touched Young’s elbow with a light, uncertain hand. “Let’s just— sit down on the bed, all right?”

“Why not?” Young said without much energy. “It’s basically an oversized couch at this point, right? Since you barely sleep anymore.”

Rush didn’t say anything to that. He steered Young to the bed and lay back against the pillows, pulling Young down to rest half on top of him.

“I hate this,” Young whispered against Rush’s neck, closing his eyes and breathing the scent of Rush in. Metal, ozone, exhaustion, and something warmer. Something more human. “I hate it.”

“I know,” Rush said softly. His hand was in Young’s hair, idly sorting the curls. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re not. You don’t give a fuck. You’re tearing yourself to pieces, and you don’t give a fuck.”

Rush was silent.

“You won’t even bother to lie to me about it,” Young murmured, feeling even wearier.

“There’s nothing I can do about it,” Rush said finally, his voice thin and strained. “It’s necessary.”

“It’s _not_. It doesn’t have to happen _now_. You don’t have to _not sleep_. You don’t have to—“

“I don’t want to talk about this with you,” Rush said. His hand had stilled in Young’s hair, clenching so tight it was almost painful. “Can we—“

Young shrugged listlessly. “It’s not like it makes a difference. You’re going to do whatever the fuck you want. You don’t listen to what I say.”

“I do,” Rush said almost soundlessly.

Young huffed out a tired laugh.

Rush shifted, maneuvering them until they both lay on their sides and his face was very close to Young’s. His eyes were very dark, somehow luminous, and unreadable. He brought his hand up to the back of Young’s neck, barely resting it there, just the gentlest ghost of a touch. “I do. I wish—“ he said, and stopped.

“What?” Young said.

“Nothing.” Rush shut his eyes briefly. “Nothing,” he said again, his voice exhausted. “Tell me about the flashback.”

Young sighed and turned away from Rush to lie on his back. “It won’t help,” he said flatly. “There was nothing about the Nakai in it. It was before that, when the doctor first— _merged_ , I guess, with the AI. Or became the AI. Whatever. He was thinking about his daughter. He thought he was giving up his chance to ascend, and that he’d never see her again. But he was doing it for her, I guess. To save her.”

“Yes,” Rush murmured. “That makes sense.”

“He was sick. He had the plague. He was— he was really scared.”

“Mm.” Rush’s eyes drifted closed. “What upset the AI?”

“I don’t know.” Young considered. “He was hurting. That was probably it. He was thinking about something. Some kind of quote or something. Something about yearning. _Yearning hurts—“_

“ _And what release may come of it feels much like death_ ,” Rush said. He sounded drowsy.

“Yeah. That was it.”

“Interesting.”

Young glanced over at Rush. Rush looked like he might be on the verge of sleep. He hadn’t really thought through the whole sitting on the bed thing. Cautiously, Young reached out to stroke a hand down his arm.

Rush made a contented sound and pushed closer. “I know what you’re doing,” he said vaguely.

“I’m being nice to you,” Young said, keeping his voice low. “Even though, for the record, you don’t deserve it.”

“No,” Rush mumbled. “I know I don’t.”

Young kept up the motion of his hand, heavy and soothing. “Shh,” he murmured.

He thought that Rush had just about finally drifted off when the crackle of his radio startled them both. Rush jumped, panic surging through him, and jerked away from Young violently before he seemed to realize where he was.

“Everett,” Telford’s voice said over the radio. “Rush hasn’t been answering his radio for the past twenty minutes. Where the hell is he?”

Young gritted his teeth. He unclipped the radio and said, “He _frequently_ doesn’t answer his radio. Just catch up with him at the briefing.”

“ _That’s_ your suggestion? We just had a major technical glitch, and no one can find Rush. That seems like a serious problem to me.”

Rush reached over and snatched the radio out of Young’s hand. “Fuck off, David,” he snapped.

Young closed his eyes and massaged a temple. “Thanks. Thanks for that.”

“He knows exactly where I am,” Rush said shortly. “He’s just fucking with you. Now he knows that you know that he knows.”

“So he’s fine, then,” Telford’s voice said dryly. “I’ll see you at the briefing.”

Rush shoved the radio back at Young.

“Knows what?” Young asked, narrowing his eyes.

“That we’re sleeping together.” Rush pushed himself off the bed and stretched unsteadily.

“How would he know that? He might _suspect—_ “

“He always knows. He has a sixth sense about that kind of thing.” Rush frowned, staring at the floor by the bed. “Have you seen my jacket? For some reason I thought I slept in it.”

“You slept in the _rest_ of your clothes, for reasons that are obscure to me.” Young stood and headed towards the couch, where he could see the jacket in question tossed over a cushion.

“I think I might have left it—“ Rush began absently, and then broke off with a thrill of alarm, his thoughts fracturing abruptly into unreadable strands.

“Might have left it where?” Young asked. He held up the jacket and tossed it to Rush.

“Nowhere,” Rush said. He caught the jacket. “Never mind. Thank you.”

Young stood and looked at him for a moment. “What are you not telling me?” he asked uneasily.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific,” Rush said, shrugging the jacket on. “These days I can barely keep track. Frankly, it could be anything from my next mutiny, for which, if you’re interested, I have a number of detailed plans, to something entirely trivial. Perhaps your next birthday gift.”

Young rolled his eyes in spite of himself. “You don’t even know when my birthday is.”

“True. Nor do I especially care. Birthdays are arbitrary occasions that, on the whole, I feel unmoved to observe.”

“You know, as a deflection, this whole tangent is pretty weak—

 _she sobs, bringing her fist down against the dining room table. “I can’t even turn a_ fucking _peg; how am I supposed to— how am I supposed to— when I can’t even—“_

_She’s been crying for a long time. He came home and found her like this, sitting in front of her music stand, her thin face blotchy and her eyes swollen, her fair hair a tangled mess. Sheet music is scattered across the table where she must have hurled it, and her violin is sitting in its velvet-lined case._

_“I can do it for you,” he says soothingly, reaching for the violin, and she hurls a chunk of rosin at him, choking out, “No! Don’t touch it! Don’t you_ dare _!”_

_“All right,” he says cautiously, stepping back._

_“_ I’m _supposed to do it. I’m supposed to be able to do it. What good am I if I can’t even tune my_ fucking _violin?”_

_“You can still play,” he says in a low voice. “You could go back to using fine tuners.”_

_“Like a fucking ten-year-old? Should I put my hair in fucking pigtails and go back to playing the Boccherini minuet?”_

_He regards her in silence for a moment. “I think you’d look lovely in pigtails,” he says softly. “And I’ve always been fond of the Boccherini minuet.”_

_She covers her face and makes a long, low sustained noise of anguish. No, not anguish. It’s an animal noise. Something beyond anguish, which is a human emotion. This is agony at the basic level of all things that hurt. He can’t bear it._ She _can’t bear it; she who prides herself on being civilized above all other qualities; she shoves her hands against her mouth as though she could stop it up, and he says helplessly, “It’s all right. Sweetheart, it’s all right.”_

_This time she lets him hold her. She presses her head against his chest, and he strokes her back, feeling her tears soak his shirt._

_She whispers, “At least I’ll be able to wear pigtails this time, if I don’t— if I—“_

_And he’s the one who swallows a sound at that. She hasn’t decided yet whether she’s going to do another round of chemo._ I can’t go through that again _, she says,_ not like last time _, because last time it was weeks and weeks of being sick all night, until they both grew used to lying curled on the tile floor in the toilet, his arms wrapped around her and his lips pressed to the back of her neck. Last time it was her thick hair coming out in strange disturbing clumps, until she took a pair of kitchen scissors to it, because she was too proud to see a hairdresser, and anyway, she said,_ Why does it matter what it looks like; it’ll be gone soon anyway; I’m losing it. I’m losing everything. Everything.

 _But she didn’t lose everything. And when she says,_ I can’t go through that again _, she means,_ I’m going to die. _She means_ , I’m going to die, and I’d rather die wearing pigtails. _And he can’t think about that. Not yet. He stands there trying to bury the thought in his consciousness, trying to figure out how he can just_ stand there _and just_ hold her _and_ not think about it _, because he can’t think about it, not yet, please just let him not think about it for a little longer, and he digs his fingers so hard into her shoulders without realizing it that she says, “Nick, you’re hurting me,” and he says in a shaky voice, “Sorry. Sorry. I’m so sorry,” and flattens his palms against the perfect curve of her back._

The memory faded out, leaving the room in silence.

Rush was staring at the floor.

Young didn’t say anything. After a moment, he reached out and carefully straightened the collar of Rush’s jacket, taking a little bit longer than he needed to smooth it down.

“Thank you,” Rush said in a low voice, without looking up.

“Can you even make it through the briefing?” Young asked quietly. “That’s two in half an hour.”

“I’ll have to, won’t I?”

“Eli can run it. I’ll go, if you want.”

“It’s just as bad for you. Unless you block.”

“I’m not going to do that,” Young said gently. “You’d have _nothing_ to fight with. You’d be practically unconscious.”

Rush still wasn’t looking at him. “That might make it easier to pull the memories forward. And _you_ wouldn’t have to—“

“I’m not the one you should be worried about,” Young said.

Rush raked his hair back, looking desperately unhappy for a moment. “If you would just—“

“Not going to happen,” Young says. “Sorry.”

 _—David says and the pool begins to sink into the floor, growing deeper and filling with more and more of that anesthetic liquid from some unseen and unstoppable source and he panics because he does not— he does not like the water, and this is not water, this is not water, but it is cold like water, and it is covering him, and soon it will be in his mouth and his lungs, and he has to move, and he cannot move, and the water (not water not water) is crawling over his skin, and his fast shallow breathing rips at his body and it is going to tear his chest apart— and David looms over him digging his hands into his shoulders and pushing him flat against the floor and he wants to fight but he can’t fight but he still tries to push David off and he says, “Please,_ please _, no, what are you_ doing _—“ and David says, “Don’t fight this,” and he touches his cheek and—_

Young grimaced and—

 _pushes the door open and tries to pull Rush through_  
_it but Rush digs his bare feet into the porch boards and shakes_  
_his head. Young frowns at him. What, you’re just going to stay_  
_out there on the porch? Rush nods unhappily. He’s staring_  
_down, dripping with some kind of thick, translucent goo, and_  
_shivering, because, well, they’re up in the mountains, so it’s_  
_hardly what you’d call warm. Young sighs. Fine, he says, far_  
_be it from me to question your brilliant fucking decision-_  
_making skills. Hang on and I’ll bring you a towel and a blanket._  
_Rush shakes his head. Yes, Young says. You’re going to_  
_catch your death. Rush shakes his head again. Young says,_  
_God, what is this, contrary day? Rush folds his arms over_  
_his head and sits down, his back against the porch railing,_  
_hugging his knees to his chest. He’s breathing fast, and he_  
_looks more miserable than Young has ever seen him. Nick,_  
_Young says, crouching down beside him. What’s wrong?_  
_Rush just shakes his head and—_  
  
“You shouldn’t do that,” Rush said tersely, as the room faded up around them. “Not— while this is happening.”

“Come on. I really don’t think you need a refresher on that particular memory.”

Rush shut his eyes briefly. “No. No, that’s not—“

“You just want to be miserable, is that it?” Young said, his temper flaring a little. “Anything that might make you less miserable— absolutely forbidden.”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” Rush said, his temper _also_ flaring. “Just tell Eli to run the fucking briefing, will you?”

“Fine,” Young said shortly. He grabbed his radio and stalked over to the couch, dropping down onto it. “Eli,” he said into the radio, “Rush and I are going to miss this morning’s briefing. We’re… pursuing a lead on the Nakai tracking device.”

“Um… okay,” Eli said, sounding dubious. “I’ll… let Colonel Telford know, and maybe come by later to let you know what happened?”

“Sounds good,” Young said. He clicked the radio off.

Rush dropped wearily onto the couch beside him. “You do realize that the entire purpose of that briefing was to discuss the tracking device.”

“Eli’s working a different angle,” Young said. “Telford and I agreed that we can’t tell Homeworld Command our plan is to have you psychically dig through a million years’ worth of ship-memories to try and _remember_ where the Nakai put the damn—“

 _He cannot_ touch _, why can he not_ touch _; he knows why; he is the one who_ wrote the program _, but he could not have anticipated this: that he would not be able to STOP THEM as they scuttle through the ship with their too-long limbs and their eyes like insects, that he would not be able STOP THEM as they approach the neural interface. To not have a body is to be PARALYZED, and he does not have a body, or if he has a body it is the ship and the ship cannot TOUCH THEM, the ship cannot STOP THEM, all of his processing capacity is consumed by FEAR, because they are touching the arms of the interface chair, and he cannot STOP THEM, not when one of them is lowering itself into the chair, and not when the neural bolts engage and oh God oh God he does not have a body but he has a MIND and it is IN HIS MIND with his thoughts that hurt and it is TEARING HIM APART and he MUST SCREAM and he CANNOT SCREAM and—_

Darkness.

Young opened his eyes.

He had doubled over at some point, clutching at himself, wracked by the millions-years-old memory of a pain so transcendent his skin still hurt. Beside him, Rush was sprawled back against the couch, his eyes shut and his thoughts dim and vacant.

“Nick,” Young said, alarmed, reaching out to shake his shoulder.

Rush made a groggy sound and blinked. “Yes,” he said vaguely. “I’m here. That was— that was useful.”

“ _Useful_? You _passed out!_ ”

“Unfortunately, yes.” Rush propped his elbows on his knees, looking exhausted as he pushed his glasses up to rub at his face. “One of them sat in the chair,” he murmured, more to himself than to Young.

“Nick—“

Rush glanced over absently at Young. “What?”

Young looked at him helplessly. His face was drawn, and the blue shadows under his eyes looked like bruises. The lines beside his mouth were tense. Young was reminded of watching the thing that wasn’t Rush, in that Berkeley-fiction, the gold light playing across its face, its expression that wasn’t pain or the moment before pain struck it. “Nothing,” he whispered.

“I still think you should block. I just fixed your mind. This is going to wreck it again.”

“What do you think it’s doing to _you_?” Young said, his voice coming out choked.

Rush shrugged minutely, looking quickly away.

“And how much _worse_ would it be if I _blocked_?”

Rush didn’t say anything.

“Right,” Young said, his chest feeling tight. “That’s what I thought.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Rush whispered.

“I’m not blocking,” Young bit out. “And I’m calling TJ.”

Rush shrugged listlessly. “Do what you like.”

* * *

Neither of them left Young’s quarters for the rest of the day. Gradually the room itself began to take on the tenor of Rush’s flashbacks. Young could no longer tell if it were night or day; he felt dislocated from time, as though centuries might have passed when he wasn’t looking. It seemed stranger not to be in pain than to be in pain. He recognized the faces that came and went: Gloria, of course, gaunt and suffering or sometimes surprisingly beautiful, but still dying, which made it worse; Telford, drowning Rush over and over, breathing out apologies and kissing him; a boy who Young thought was probably Rush’s brother, drowning in a river, and once his parents, who were fucking pieces of work; the Nakai, of course, both ancient and modern; the doctor’s young partner, Aisthenata, who had died a slow and painful death. There were cities, too: the white light of California and the grim streets of Glasgow; Atlantis, all spires and skylights and angles, and Discenna, which was stone and glass, and Dulcestiom Uervis, where the plague had wiped out hundreds of schoolchildren.

Young started to think of the people like characters from a dream, and the cities like dream-landscapes. There was a dream-like quality to the atmosphere, and when TJ came by around lunchtime, he had the strange experience that he’d sometimes had after a vivid dream: he half-expected her to know the whole line of the narrative, and when she didn’t, it was jarring, as though she’d come from another world.

She took one look at him and said, “You need to get out of here.”

“I’ve already told him that,” Rush said, sounding slow and drugged. He was sprawled out on the couch, staring vacantly at the wall, where he seemed to be tracking the progress of a shadow from the lamp.

“ _You_ need to get out of here, too,” TJ said to him tartly. “I just know better than to expect you’ll listen to me.”

“Yes, well,” he said, and fell silent.

“ _And_ you need to eat something. Both of you.”

Young sighed. “I’d probably only throw it up.”

She gave him an incredulous look.

He shrugged.

“Everett—“

“Look, what do you expect me to do, TJ?” he said in a furious whisper. “If I try to block him, it’s fucking worse for him, and he’s already _passed out_ once this morning; not to mention some other… complications that happen when he ends up in the ship, which I don’t even want to talk about—“

“What other complications?” Rush asked loudly. “I can hear you, you know.”

“Shut up,” Young said over his shoulder.

Rush gave a limp shrug. “I was just asking.” His eyes shifted to the wall again.

TJ said softly, “I’m just pointing out what you already know, which is that this is _not healthy_ for either of you.”

Young laughed raggedly in her face. “Yeah. No kidding.”

But there was nothing physically wrong with either of them, and so, after a while, she left.

They plunged back into the dream.

Between flashbacks, Young doggedly tried to engage Rush in conversation about anything other than what they were seeing. What they’d seen.

“…Everyone told me I’d like Colorado Springs,” he said around sixteen hundred hours, “because I was from the West. But that’s not the real West. It’s so urban. Even someplace like Cheyenne—“

“It’s practically Denver,” Rush said absently, without looking at him. “You told me.”

Young frowned. “When did I tell you that?”

“In a dream.”

Which only heightened the sense that nothing happening was real, or that it was impossible to tell where what was real began. By that point Young was sitting on the couch with Rush’s head in his lap, carding slow fingers through his hair while Rush blinked vaguely at the wall. The intensity of his focus had started to worry Young a little. His weather was muddled and confused, and his thoughts were pulled far back.

“What else did I tell you in my dreams?” Young asked.

“I don’t remember.”

“You could show me.”

“I don’t want you in my head,” Rush said.

“Why not?”

“Because.”

“That’s a five-year-old’s answer.”

Rush didn’t rise to the bait. He frowned distractedly. “I didn’t think you knew about the dreams.”

Young’s hand paused for a moment. “Yeah,” he said, trying to sound casual. “I do know.”

He had forgotten that the person who’d told him about the dreams hadn’t been Rush.

“Oh,” Rush said, sounding disinterested. His gaze moved fractionally up the wall.

“Nick,” Young said. “What are you looking at?”

“Nothing,” Rush said.

* * *

The flashbacks seemed to get less and less frequent as the evening died, but the sense of strangeness in the room didn’t improve. Rush seemed all but unable to tear his eyes away from the wall, no matter how Young tried to distract him from it— sitting directly in front of him on the table, playing a movie on his computer, even, in desperation, picking an argument with him about whether or not they were going to leave to get dinner, which Rush, inevitably, won. When Young tried cautiously to brush against his mind and get a sense of what he was seeing, Rush slapped him back with startling viciousness.

“What the hell was that?” Young asked, taken aback.

“I don’t want you in there,” Rush said.

“Yeah, you said that already.”

“So learn to take a fucking hint.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Young said wearily. “I’ve spent my whole day living your worst nightmares, plus the worst nightmares of a complete stranger thrown in, _after_ having to talk the AI down from a panic attack, which _by the way_ , I didn’t have to do. I could have just left you there, frozen, till your brain started to hemorrhage—”

“You wouldn’t do that,” Rush said softly, still not looking at him.

“No. I wouldn’t. You know why?”

Briefly, Rush glanced over at him. Something in his expression seemed to crack. “Yes,” he whispered.

It derailed Young’s frustration. “Nick,” he said. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Rush was struggling to mend that hard-to-look-at crack. He glanced away, taking a breath, then back with a painful, wavering smile. “I’m just tired,” he said. “And— cold. Do you mind if I—?” He dragged Young’s arm around his shoulders and curled close to him. He didn’t seem that cold. He was maybe shivering a little, but that barely qualified as cold for Rush. And the trembling in his body could have easily been something else. He was still glancing out at the empty shadows from time to time with a look on his face that would give anyone chills.

* * *

By the time twenty-one hundred hours rolled around, it had been forty-five minutes since Rush’s last flashback.

“I don’t think they’re going to happen anymore,” Rush said vaguely. He was still curled up against Young.

Young glanced at him sharply. “Why not?” he asked, trying to keep his voice careful.

Rush yawned. “Many reasons.”

“You know, if you’re tired, and you’re not having flashbacks, you should go to sleep.”

“No,” Rush said absently. “It’s not a good idea.” His eyes flickered as though he were watching something.

“Right,” Young said, resigned. “Why would that be a good idea. I’m through being your space heater, though. I’m going to take a shower. Want to come with?”

Rush tensed abruptly and seemed conflicted. He’d brought a hand up to tighten around Young’s wrist. “Don’t—“ he said uncertainly, his gaze swinging back and forth between Young and the wall. “Don’t go.”

“Are you going to tell me _why?_ ”

“No,” Rush said reluctantly. “But—“

“Are you going to tell me _anything?_ ”

“No,” Rush whispered again.

Young sighed. “Well, then, I’m going to go.”

He had to pry Rush’s fingers off of his wrist.

“I’ll be back in half an hour,” he said, aiming for a gentle tone, and not one that was slightly unnerved. “ _Please_ do something other than sit here and stare at the wall.”

Rush shook his head, looking disturbed.

* * *

Getting out of those quarters was a relief. Young had to stop and take a deep breath and lean against a bulkhead. Being out in the real world drew attention to the sense of creeping dread that had been slowly stealing up over him. What the _fuck_ was going on? Was Rush losing it? That happened to people, sometimes, when they went too long without sleep. It happened to guys in the Air Force on deployments sometimes, when they started eating amphetamines by the handful to pull through late nights. And they weren’t even replaying a million years’ worth of traumas on a mental loop.

He ran a hand over his face. He didn’t— he didn’t know what to _do._

In the end, he did the only thing he _could_ do, which was shower, wishing— not for the first time— that there was actual water instead of aerosolized spray, something that could make him feel like he was drowning. It helped, though, or the time away from Rush helped, and he felt almost normal by the time he stopped by the infirmary. That was good, because he was about to be making a pretty big ask of TJ, and he didn’t want to seem like he was partly insane.

She was working late, of course, the dim light turning her hair golden as she bent over her desk. She looked up as he approached and smiled at him. “Hey,” she said. “You finally took my advice.”

“Yeah,” he said, drawing out the word. “About that. About that whole… atmosphere.”

“Not a great atmosphere. Half a star for atmosphere on Yelp.” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

“He has to sleep,” Young said heavily. “He’s barely slept in days. I’m starting to get— I mean, obviously I’m not _starting_ to get worried about him; there’s a general ongoing worry _situation_ that you just accept as part of knowing Rush, but I’m definitely _more worried_.”

TJ studied his face. “I shouldn’t really,” she began.

Young said, “Just one night. Even just, I don’t know, five hours or something. Enough to give his brain a break.”

She covered his hands with her face and sighed. “Fine. But only because I was in that room with you guys, and frankly, don’t take this the wrong way, but I really wanted to get out of that room.”

She went to her cabinet and pulled out a small brown bottle, took a Sharpie, and marked the bottle into three parts. “A third of this should put him out for somewhere between four and eight hours. It kicks in pretty quick. About five minutes or so. Put it in tea if you want to hide the flavor. But you’re taking all the blame for this.”

“I really doubt that’s going to be a problem,” Young said dryly. “Very little seems to prevent me from taking all the blame.”

Her mouth quirked up as he turned to go. He made it out the door before she said, in an uncertain voice, “Everett.”

He looked back at her quizzically.

She was staring down at her desk. “Do you ever… do you ever think about what might have happened? Not with you and me, but with— if I hadn’t…”

He knew what she was talking about by the fact that she couldn’t say it. He turned back around and regarded her carefully. “I did,” he said at last, after a long pause. “—At lot. I thought about it a lot. But I was never really sure how much you wanted me to… be involved, I guess.”

“I was never really sure how much _you_ wanted to be involved. I think I was never really sure what you wanted at all.”

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I guess that’s— pretty fair.”

“I didn’t mean—“ She stopped and shrugged slightly. “Or I guess maybe I did.”

Young said very hesitantly, “I liked the idea. Of being a father. But I think maybe I thought… it would solve everything.” He looked down. “I don’t really know what I mean by that. Maybe that we would get back together, or— it just felt so normal, with the baby shower and everything. It felt good. Like something I knew how to do. I wanted that.”

“You never really wanted normal,” she said softly.

He smiled painfully. “You think not?”

“Well. You never wanted it when you got it.”

It hurt. He said, “Maybe that’s true. But it still felt good. To feel like I could have that. You asked. That’s the answer. I thought about it.”

She nodded slowly. “Thank you for telling me.”

“Can I ask why…?”

“Just something someone said the other day. I realized I’d never really talked to you about it.”

He looked at her, then away. “No. I guess not. It seemed like you just wanted to put it behind you.”

“It doesn’t really work that way.” She was drawing restless shapes on her desk with a fingertip. A circle. A heart. A smiley-face. “It doesn’t really stay behind you. It’s just… part of your life now.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. He stood there, feeling tongue-tied and insufficient, until she looked up at him and said, with a faint smile, “It’s all right. You don’t have to know what to say.”

“You’re almost as bad as Rush,” Young said wryly.

“Well, we were always good at that. Even without the whole—“ she waved a hand around her head. “Though somehow I have a feeling Rush is better.”

“I think—“ Young began with difficulty. He stopped and took a breath. “I think— he might be?”

He couldn’t quite look up at her, to see if she understood what he was saying. But he caught the brief edge of a pained expression crossing her face, and didn’t really understand it, except that maybe he shouldn’t have said anything.

“You should get on home,” she said. “He’ll be waiting.”

Young rolled his eyes. “Like he ever waits for me.”

He saluted her with the bottle as he left. He felt her watching him for a long time, until the doors closed behind him, leaving him in the hall, and her in the infirmary.

* * *

When Young got back to his quarters, Rush was in the exact same position on the couch, watching the wall with haunted eyes. Young doubted he’d moved the entire time that Young had been absent. The overhead light in the room had dimmed, leaving more shadows gathering at the corners of the room, and the sight of Rush staring fixedly at them as though there were something lurking within them was somehow even more disturbing than it had been.

“Hey,” Young said cautiously, setting the two cups he was carrying on the table. “Sorry I took a little longer than I thought I would. I got us some tea.”

“It’s decaffeinated,” Rush said vaguely.

“Accurate. No caffeine on the ship.”

“So it’s not really tea, is it?”

Young raised an eyebrow. “This is the argument we’re having tonight? For real?”

Rush half-shrugged. He stole a glance at Young and shifted closer to where he was resting on the arm of the couch.

“You could’ve come with me,” Young said, in response to the unspoken sense that Rush was, for whatever reason, glad he was back.

Rush shook his head and didn’t say anything. After a moment, he turned a heavy gaze on the cups. “I’m assuming you drugged that?”

“What do you think?”

Rush considered. “I’m not drinking it,” he said finally, and looked back at the wall.

Young rolled his eyes. “I don’t need to drug you. You’re so tired that you’ll fall asleep in about ten minutes.”

“I don’t think that’s very likely,” Rush said in an unsteady voice.

Young took a seat beside him on the couch and handed him a cup. “What are you looking at, Nick?” he asked in a neutral tone.

When Rush took the cup, his hand was visibly trembling. “Nothing. Just the AI,” he said.

A flash of movement behind the couch caught Young’s attention. The AI was standing there, projecting as Sheppard. It shook its head.

“That must be pretty distracting,” Young said, giving it an alarmed look.

“Mm,” Rush said, tilting his head a little and frowning. He paused. “It’s late,” he said slowly. “You should go to sleep.”

“I will,” Young said. “After I drink my tea.”

Rush shot him a quick, narrow, suspicious look. He glanced down at his cup. “Switch with me.”

“They’re exactly the same,” Young said.

“Then there’s no reason not to switch with me.”

“Fine,” Young said, mildly exasperated. He exchanged their cups.

Rush looked down. “Sorry,” he said, finally taking a drink.

 _“_ So suspicious,” Young said, shaking his head. He drank from his own cup. “Anything new happen while I was out? That wall get any more exciting?”

“I’m not looking at the wall,” Rush absently. “I told you—“ He broke off abruptly, his gaze snapping back to the wall.

Young glanced over at the AI. Its arms were wrapped around its chest, one hand pressed to its lips. _What is he looking at?_ he mouthed at it.

It shook its head again, flickering. But he saw it fist its fingers in its sleeves and deliberately avert its gaze from whatever it was that Rush could see.

“…I told you,” Rush resumed, after a long pause. “It’s the AI.”

“Right,” Young said. “I forgot. That’s right.” He took another drink. “So, any big plans for tonight?”

“I’m going to find the tracking device,” Rush said. He had been drinking mechanically. “I’m fairly certain of that.”

“It doesn’t seem like you’ve made much progress.”

“Pulling the memories forward was—“ Rush yawned, and seemed to lose the thread of his sentence. “—Necessary,” he finished at last. “But I never said I expected the answer to come from them directly.”

“Ah,” Young said. “I see.”

“That was an assumption on your part.”

“Well, you know me. I’m very stupid.”

Rush said, his head starting to droop a little, “Not as much as I’d like.”

“So how _are_ you going to find it?”

“I’ll tell you after I’ve done it,” Rush said, sounding drowsy.

“Well,” Young said, “I don’t think it’s happening tonight.”

“I’m quite certain that it is.”

“I drugged your tea.”

Rush looked down uncertainly. “No,” he said. “We switched cups.”

“I drugged both cups.”

Rush looked astonished. “But you,” he said blurrily. “You—“

“Yup.” Young showed his half-empty cup. “Me too.”

“Oh,” Rush said, staring. His own cup was starting to list in his hand. Young rescued it and set it on the table. “That’s really— very clever.”

“I thought so,” Young said. He stood and pulled Rush up. “Come on, tiger. Let’s get you to bed before you pass out. You can tell me how much you hate me in the morning.”

Rush could barely stand. He leaned heavily against Young’s shoulder, and together they staggered toward the bed. “No,” Rush said abstractedly. “No. And if you knew, you’d— and anyway, you might well have helped me. I was _already_ going to try drugs next _._ ”

“Great. That sounds like a _great_ move.”

“I’m trying to increase my sensitivity,” Rush said, slurring the words. “Trying to lower the minimum threshold for signal detection.”

“Well, what you’re _succeeding_ at is going to _sleep_.”

They almost made it to the bed without overbalancing, but some lopsided step or errant bootlace made them lose their footing at the last minute, and they ended up tumbling onto it hard. They landed tangled up together and slightly breathless in a warm heap. Rush was left looking down at Young, wide-eyed and oddly vulnerable.

He touched Young’s face and said, sounding wistful, “Let’s go somewhere nice after all this.”

Young raised his eyebrows. “Like where? The observation deck?”

“No. I don’t know. Hawaii. Isn’t that where Americans go on holiday?”

“You want to go to Hawaii with me?”

“Yes. What do you think?”

Young shrugged. “I’ll go to Hawaii with you.”

He shifted Rush off of him gently and sat up to get their boots off. He was still squinting at the laces when Rush said, “Come back.”

“I will. I’m just—“

“No. Just leave them. I don’t care.”

Young crawled back up the bed. Rush looped both arms around his neck and dragged him close. Confronted with the nearness of him, Young couldn’t resist kissing him lightly and chastely on the forehead and the nose, then on the cheek, the chin, and the jawline. Rush didn’t protest; he just hummed slightly and pulled Young closer, threading a hand distractedly through his hair. Young rested his head on Rush’s shoulder.

“This is too hard for you,” Rush said quietly, almost to himself.

“Shh,” Young said. “Go to sleep.”

“Wake me up in four hours.”

Young rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Sure.”

“Not you.” Rush sighed and nosed sleepily at his forehead. “Where is Hawaii?”

“The Pacific,” Young said, his words muffled against Rush’s neck.

“Mm. Warm."

“Very warm.”

“That sounds nice,” Rush whispered.

Young smiled against him. He could feel the subtle shift as Rush slipped into sleep: his breath evening, his fingers going lax in Young’s curls. He was dreaming in obscure clouds at the back of Young’s mind, and, lulled by their swelling, drifting, softly changing colors, Young finally slept as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Yearning hurts..." is one of Heraclitus's _Fragments_ , but cleanwhiteroom has it feature in an Ancient setting in "Mathematique."


	44. A Warning to the Curious

When Dale Volker was ten years old, he saw a ghost. Not that he thinks it was _really_ a ghost, because he’s a scientist now, and there are a lot of compelling non-supernatural explanations for ghosts, like infrasound, for one, and also strange air conditions, and abnormalities in the brain. But when he was ten, he hadn’t quite reached that level of skepticism. And it’s hard to go back and write a memory out when you’ve inscribed it in your cortex a certain way.

Here’s what happened: he and his family were on Nantucket for the summer, because, okay, so sue him, his family is— well, not _rich_ , not like _rich_ rich; he’d say they were pretty moderately wealthy; they didn’t _own_ a house on Nantucket, but they rented one from time to time, some years. So he was ten years old and they were renting this shingle house on the cliffside. And if you’ve never stayed in a place like that, then maybe you don’t know that at night the dark in those places gets _really_ dark, because there aren’t any city lights, and your neighbors are pretty sparse, and there’s just this big stretch of black sea, out to the horizon, with occasionally the blinking light of a boat, far-out. He would look out of his bedroom window at night and think about whales under the water, because at that point he was into marine biology, and it made him feel weird and a little frightened to think about how underneath that darkness there were all of these animals, not sleeping, but moving at depths he couldn’t see. Not just whales, but seals and sharks and jellyfish and sea stars, a whole slow cold world that he only caught a glimpse of when it washed up on the beaches, in bones and shell and other dead left-over parts of things.

So that particular night, in the mid-eighties, he was looking out his window and saw something down on the beach, right at the edge of the black ocean. He thought it was just a flashlight at first, because sometimes people did go down to the beaches at night, especially teenagers looking for a bonfire or going home from house parties. It wasn’t a flashlight, though. It was more like a lantern: a glowing, wavering thing that rocked back and forth in the air. He watched it for a while as it went up and down the beachfront. He could tell that someone was holding it, because there was a trail of footprints in the pale sand, and because he could make out a dark shape and a long white arm in the light. After a while, he opened his window up, because he was a baby scientist, and he wanted to _know_. He wanted to _see more_. Opening the window made a sound, and whatever it was down on the beach turned to face him. It brought the lantern close to its head, and—

It was a woman. He knew it was a woman, or he _thought_ it was a woman, because whatever it was had long, dirty, and oddly wet-looking blond hair, but there was something… there was something _wrong_ about her. To this day, he can’t really describe it. All he can say is that there was something horrible about her face. When he saw her, he knew right away that she wasn’t human, even though she was human-shaped, and he slammed the window shut and ran to his parents’ bedroom.

He thinks that it was probably just a dream. But it was one of those dreams you don’t forget. For years afterwards he tried to figure out what had happened, why he’d felt such an immediate, visceral surge of dread, and he means visceral in the _real_ sense, like he felt it _in his organs_ , like his skin was prickling and he was nauseated and his throat went strange. He didn’t feel anything like that again for years. For _years_.

Which brings us to the present day.

Or not quite. Because the night started out pretty normal. Night, of course, because Volker spends a _hell_ of a lot of his time on night shift, for no other reason than that Rush _hates_ him, and why? Well, he’s never really figured that one out. He’s not a _bad scientist_. Rush isn’t even an _astrophysicist_ , for God’s sake, so how would he know, even if he does have a weird polymath thing going on, and at this point, haven’t we all accepted that outrageously prodigious genius doesn’t always mean doing good work? Volker does good work, even if he’s a little bit slower. He kind of suspects the real root of the problem is that Rush pretty transparently has a chip on his shoulder about the whole working-class thing, and people like that tend to have rich-person-radar. They can smell it on you. Even if your family’s not _really_ rich, and, like, Volker’s family was more just _intellectual middle-class_ , but Rush probably considers that the same thing. He probably assumes, like a lot of people do, that Volker didn’t have to work for his achievements, even though he did. He _did_. And anyway, Chloe’s family is just as bad, if not worse, and does Rush care? The hell he does. All it took was her almost getting turned into an alien for him to practically adopt her. Volker had a kidney transplant, but _apparently_ that doesn’t carry the same cache.

Whatever. He doesn’t even like Rush. So he does all his night shifts with a sense of resentment, and this particular one was no different until about four AM, when the doors to the CI room slid open. That wasn’t so unusual, either, because it’s a ship full of insomniacs, and Chloe especially has a habit of sometimes dropping by.

But it’s not Chloe. It’s Rush. He stands in the doorway for a long time, silhouetted by the dim hallway lights, his head slightly tilted in a way that’s… strange. For no good reason, a chill runs down Volker’s spine.

“Hey,” he says nervously. “Rush. Aren’t you supposed to be taking it easy?”

Rush says nothing for a moment. Then he says, “Volker, may I borrow your radio? Mine has run down.”

Something about his tone is wrong.

It’s at this point that Volker begins thinking about the ghost.

“Sure,” he says, edging backwards a little as Rush advances into the room. The doors slide closed, which Volker kind of wishes they hadn’t done.

In the blue light, Volker can see that Rush looks terrible. His face is white, which draws the shadows under his eyes out, and a very thin line of blood is making its way from behind his ear. He isn’t looking at Volker. His eyes are focused just a little bit off to the side, on the shadows in the corner of the room, as though he’s watching something that isn’t there. He stops when he gets near Volker and turns. He seems to have forgotten what he’s doing. His eyes flicker back and forth across whatever he’s watching, and Volker breaks out into a cold sweat. He casts a glance over his shoulder, just to— just to make _sure_ that nothing’s there. But the room is empty. There’s only shadows.

“Rush,” Volker says uneasily, “Are you okay?”

“I don’t think so,” Rush whispers.

He turns back to Volker, his eyes vaguely shifting to him. “Volker,” he says, “may I borrow your radio? Mine has run down.”

His cadence is precisely the same as it was before, less like a voice than a tape recording. Or like he’s mimicking something.

 _Mimicking a human_ , say the hairs at the back of Volker’s neck.

Volker takes another step back and says, “Uh, sure. Here.” He thrusts the radio forward, his hand a little shaky.

Rush takes the radio and, with one quick motion, pulls out a critical transmitter component and crushes it underneath his heel. “Thank you,” he says, mechanically handing the radio back to Volker and staring vacantly into the dark.

Volker looks at the crushed metal pieces of the transmitter, like little bits of shell on the CI room floor. Rush, he notices, isn’t even carrying a radio.

Volker’s not a good scientist. He should have seen that from the start.

Rush is moving like he’s underwater, slowly drifting across the deck towards a monitor bank that he fixes his empty gaze on.

Volker feels an abrupt surge of claustrophobia, maybe because he was thinking about being underwater. Suddenly the room feels like a submarine on the ocean floor, like he’s trapped in here with Rush and there’s nothing outside except black water for miles and miles.

Covertly, he makes his way to a console, but when he touches it, he finds he’s locked out. “Uh,” he says cautiously, “do you want to maybe… let me into my console?”

Rush doesn’t respond to him.

“Rush,” Volker says.

“I apologize for destroying your radio,” Rush says abstractedly. He’s still staring at the monitor bank, which appears to be showing a completely ordinary schematic of the power grid.

“That’s… that’s okay,” Volker says. “I’m just… wondering what’s going on.”

“I’m actively hallucinating,” Rush says, tilting his head again and frowning at the console.

Volker doesn’t know what to say to that. “That sounds… inconvenient?” he tries.

“Accurate,” Rush murmurs. “It creates a difficulty.”

“And what’s that?”

Rush’s gaze abruptly swings towards the back of the room. “You should _be_ so lucky!” he snaps.

“Um… hallucination?” Volker asks uncertainly, trying to edge towards the door.

“No,” Rush says. “Not that one.”

He considers the monitor bank again, raking his hair back, which exposes the trail of blood behind his ear. “I’m a bit unclear,” he says in a thoughtful tone of voice, “as to whether what I’m seeing represents a visual interpretation of incompletely purged code, or whether I’ve lost touch with reality. The possibility exists, I suppose, that the two are not mutually exclusive.”

Volker edges a little further away. He really— he _really_ does not like enclosed spaces, and he’s feeling very enclosed here. Logically, he knows that beyond these walls is a ship the size of a small city, and beyond its hull, the whole universe. But any space becomes small when you’re trapped with something dangerous inside it, or even with something you can’t predict, an animal you can’t understand, something that doesn’t play by the rules the rest of your world plays by, because it comes from a slow spiny cold prickly underwater world. That’s the way he feels about Rush right now.

Maybe he’s been starting to feel that way about Rush for a while.

“Well,” he says uncertainly, mostly to buy time, “it sounds like you need an external means of verification. That’s what a scientist would say.”

Rush mulls this over. “So if I find it, I’m not insane. If I don’t find it, then perhaps I am.”

“Find what?”

“The means by which the Nakai track Destiny. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Volker echoes. “Do you— uh— need any help with that?”

Maybe he could get _Rush_ out of the room. Considering the number of critical systems Rush can access from these monitors, and the fact that Rush is bleeding and hallucinating, that might be preferable.

“No,” Rush says. “The moment I’m not watching you, you’ll notify Colonel Young. If he finds me like this the fallout will be… considerable.” A pained look crosses his face. “He won’t allow me to continue the search.”

“Yeah,” Volker says. “Yeah, I think you’re probably right. He tends to be… pretty worried about you. He’ll probably want to know what’s wrong. So, uh, what _is_ wrong with you?”

“Acutely?” Rush asks. His gaze has drifted again towards the shadows. He flinches at whatever it is he sees there. “Colonel Telford helped me to… decompensate.”

“What did he do to you?” Volker asks with a sinking feeling, thinking of the blood on Rush’s neck.

Rush frowns absently. “Which time?”

Volker closes his eyes. He’s pretty sure he needs to get Rush out of the room.

He hangs back and watches Rush for a moment, considering how to do this. Rush still has his eyes fixed somewhere near the outer wall. He almost looks like he’s dreaming, like he might be sleepwalking. Or else, Volker supposes with a chill, like he’s looking into that other world he comes from: one that just happens to be overlaid on their own.

Volker really doesn’t like that idea.

“What are you looking at?” he asks Rush.

“The Nakai,” Rush says tonelessly. “They’re torturing the AI.”

“Why would they do that?”

“They do not understand its nature,” Rush says.

“And that’s connected to the tracking device?”

“Not directly,” Rush says. “The torture of the AI and the placement of the device were contemporaneous.”

“So why are you…?”

“I have a personal interest in the AI.” Something in his expression suggests that, whatever he’s seeing, Volker should be glad he can’t see it as well. It’s hard to know what Rush is feeling, usually; the only strong emotion he ever shows are irritation and fury. The Irritation-Fury spectrum. Maybe the Irritation/Fury coordinate plane, where a {0,0} is the most you can hope for. This expression introduces a third axis, which seems like it might be: Horror.

“You don’t know if it’s real,” Volker points out tentatively. “Not till you find the tracking device. So maybe you… shouldn’t focus on that too much.”

He’s not being honest. He just doesn’t want to look at Rush’s eyes. He doesn’t want to have to imagine what the Nakai are doing. The Nakai that aren’t really there, in the shadows of the room.

Rush looks back down at the display. He traces it with a sluggish finger. He whispers, “Whole swathes of the grid are going dark. Life support is offline.”

It isn’t, of course. Not on the screen Volker sees. Slowly, he’s beginning to understand what’s going on here. Rush isn’t seeing the present. Or he’s mostly not seeing the present; he knows, at least, that Volker’s there, but to him Volker is the ghost and the real, living world is what happened about a million years ago. If that’s even what happened. If he isn’t dreaming it up in the malfunctioning engine of his brain.

“Don’t the Nakai need life support?” Volker asks.

“Individual lives mean nothing to them,” Rush says in that same flat, eerie voice. “As soon as it gets out of the chair they will all be killed. They know this. They’re already dead. It just hasn’t happened yet.”

“Okay,” Volker says, feeling disturbed. “Do you— do you think the tracking device might be in the life support system?”

Rush’s finger stills on the screen. “Life support interfaces with the hardware of the AI at several points across the ship.”

Volker says hastily, “I don’t think it’s a good idea to mess with the life support system. Not till you’re absolutely sure that this is real.”

Rush says, sounding mildly interested, “What does it mean for something to be real?”

“External verification?” Volker offers weakly. He really… he thinks it’s pretty important that Rush get a sharp, simple handle right now on what it means for something to be real. “We decided that, right? Some kind of external verification. This… might not be the time or the place to, uh, get into philosophical debates.”

“Isn’t it?” Rush frowns. “I suppose not. I was going to ask if you believed in ghosts.”

Volker hesitates, somewhat thrown. He says, “I guess it depends on what you mean by _ghost_.”

Rush smiles faintly. “That’s an excellent answer.” He reaches out to touch Volker’s hand, as though in some kind of gesture of approval. His fingertips are freezing cold. Volker thinks: like the dead.

Rush brushes past Volker, towards the door.

“Rush,” Volker says desperately. “I don’t think you should leave.”

“Why not?” Rush asks curiously.

“Well, for one thing, I’m a little worried that you’re going to mess with the life support system, which would be a… a bad idea, just a really bad idea. You’re going to have to trust me on that.”

Rush shrugs indifferently.

“You also probably need to go to the infirmary. You’re bleeding. And you’re— like— _really_ cold.”

“There’s a chance that will be the case for the foreseeable future,” Rush murmurs, shutting his eyes for a moment.

“You could at least take me with you,” Volker blurts. “I don’t think you should be alone.”

“That also,” Rush says, “may well be the case for the foreseeable future. I wish that you hadn’t been here tonight.”

“I won’t tell anyone!” Volker promises. “I won’t tell—“ He falters. “I won’t tell anyone. Just take me with you, at least.”

“Someone will find you at the shift change,” Rush says. “That’s five hours from now.”

“Rush. Please don’t leave.”

Rush shuts his eyes again, and folds his arms over his head, looking desolate. “If I wouldn’t stay for _him_ ,” he whispers, “then I’m afraid _you_ haven’t got a chance in hell of convincing me.”

Abruptly, and with a panicked, awful, last-ditch kind of energy, Volker takes advantage of the lapse in focus to grab one of Rush's arms, dragging him backwards, and then— when Rush pulls away sharply— trying to wrestle him to the floor. This should be easy, he thinks; he should be able to pin Rush; he’s a big guy, and Rush is a small one, and Rush is so obviously out of it. But as soon as he forces Rush down, Rush is kicking and wriggling and clawing; he has a go, for the love of God, at _biting Volker’s wrist_. They roll over and over, Volker using his height and weight and Rush fighting dirty; at one point, Rush breaks away and Volker grabs his ankle, sending him sprawling onto the deck. Rush lashes out at him at him again, frantically, trying to stop Volker from bending his arm behind his back, and then when Volker gets it done, he still doesn’t stop fighting, until Volker’s afraid he’s going to have to do real harm to him.

“Stop,” he says, agonized. “ _Rush. Stop fighting._ ”

“ _Fuck you_ ,” Rush says violently, sounding tormented. He arches his back and tries to wrench away. “I _won’t let you_ ; _not again_ _—_ “

“Whatever you’re seeing, it’s _not real!_ ” Volker pants. “It’s the _past_ , it’s _not real._ ”

Rush gives a choked, terrible laugh. “You _would_ think that,” he says hoarsely. “ _You_ would.”

He struggles ineffectually for a moment, and then strains so hard against Volker’s straining hands that Volker’s afraid he’s going to break a bone. He doesn’t want that to happen. But he also doesn’t want to let Rush go.

“Don’t do this,” he says helplessly. “Please. You’ve got to trust me. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Rush rests his face against the floor for a moment. “Yes,” he whispers. “He said that, too.”

Then he drives hard against Volker, pushing him off-balance so that Volker has to choose whether to let go or do the thing he doesn’t want and dislocate a shoulder or maybe snap Rush’s wrist.

He lets go.

Rush lunges away and ends up collapsing almost immediately, breathing hard and sprawled across the deck. It’s pretty obvious that he can’t stand. But when Volker reaches out for him, he meets the golden _SNAP_ discharge of a force field.

Rush crawls away, breathing hard and shuddering, cradling his right wrist to his chest. He backs himself into a corner and pulls his knees up, squeezing his eyes shut and looking unbelievably distressed. He just stays there for a couple of minutes.

“Rush. Rush, don’t leave,” Volker says. “You can’t leave me here.”

But Rush pushes himself unsteadily to his feet. “You’ll be all right,” he says. He isn’t looking at Volker. His eyes flicker to his left. “Don't give me that look, sweetheart,” he says in a dull voice.

The door opens, and he slowly limps through it.

It closes behind him, and the bolt clicks.

Volker sits and stares at the pale gold of the force field. After a while, it dies away, leaving him alone in the dark. It’s not a _real_ dark, not like the dark of the seaside, not with the fitful glow from the locked monitor screens. But it _feels_ dark. He feels like Rush has left him alone with the unreal past, which suddenly seems a little too real, like he’s going to turn and see a Nakai crouching in the shadows, its long fingers curling around the edge of a monitor bank. Like the past is a black ocean and Rush did something to disturb its waters, and now Volker can’t pretend it’s just a flat surface like the floor. He has to think about those animals out there, the ones who usually just get washed up in manageable pieces. He really, really wishes they would stay manageable pieces. But he doesn’t think that’s the kind of animals they are.

A ghost is supposed to be a manageable piece, he thinks. One of those parts that gets left over. Just a whisper. Just a shadow. Something that might be frightening, but can’t touch you. The ghost he saw in Nantucket wasn’t like that. It left footprints. Maybe that was why it had scared him so much. Why the memory stuck with him for so long that he’s still thinking about it now, sitting in that dark room imagining the Nakai doing whatever it is they did to the AI. He remembers the ghost holding its lantern up, like it was trying to see him, trying to get a clear sense of what he was. For years afterwards, when he was still sure it had been a ghost, he was afraid that it might have seen his face, and that it would follow him. Like it was attached to him, somehow, and he would never really be able to escape. It would wait and wait, invisible in the darkness, and then one day, when he had almost forgotten, it would reach out with its long white arm and—

He presses his hands against his eyes. It’s not real. It’s just a memory.

It’s just a memory, he thinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter comes from M.R. James's story of the same name.


	45. Chapter 45

“Everett.”

He had been dreaming of someplace warm.

“Everett.”

He didn’t want to wake up.

“ _Everett._ ”

He felt hungover. That was Sheppard’s voice. Sheppard sounded frightened. Were they offworld today? Had something happened? Without opening his eyes, he groped for his sidearm.

“Everett, _please_ wake up.”

No. He was in a bed.

A bed on Destiny.

He blinked and squinted into Sheppard’s face. Sheppard had really beautiful hazel eyes, he thought groggily. How had he never noticed that before? There was a lot he hadn’t noticed.

In his half-awake state, it took him a while to realize that Sheppard wasn’t really Sheppard, and that he looked scared.

“What is it?” he mumbled. His head was full of cotton wool. Had he… he’d drugged himself. That was right. What a brilliant plan. At least Rush had—

But Rush wasn’t in the bed with him.

“Something is wrong with him,” the AI said, its voice tight and nervous.

Young turned over and buried his face in the pillow with a groan. “How the hell did he wake up before me?” he said, his voice muffled. “What time is it?”

“It is seven thirty. He has been awake for five hours.”

“What the _fuck_?” He sat up abruptly, glaring at it. “Why didn’t you wake me up? Where the hell is he?”

“He is—“ the AI pointed toward the couch with a shaky hand.

Young looked. In the main room of his quarters, nearly the entirety of the deck was covered with a very finely detailed chalk schematic of some section of the ship. From the bed, he could just make out one of Rush’s booted feet dangling off the sofa, and his right hand, which still held the stick of chalk, trailing limply on the floor.

He sighed and covered his face with his hands, intensely tired for a moment, then stood and crossed the room. Rush was lying face-down, his head pillowed on one arm. Young poked his shoulder.

“Rush,” he said.

Nothing.

//Rush.//

Rush’s mind was… not dreaming, he realized. It was totally dormant. He wasn’t asleep. He was unconscious.

Young dropped to his knees beside the couch, feeling shocky with alarm, and fumbled to turn Rush onto his back. “What the _fuck_ happened?” he bit out, throwing a furious glance over his shoulder at the AI.

“He found it,” the AI said in a small voice.

Rush’s BDUs were streaked with dust, and there were bruises swelling up on his wrists, a long scrape tracing down one forearm, like he’d been in a fight with someone. A little frantic, Young checked for a head wound. His hand came away smudged with blood. There was blood on the side of Rush’s neck, an uneven line running down to his collar. He pushed Rush’s hair back, trying to see where it was coming from.

Just behind Rush’s ear was a small, neat puncture wound.

For a couple of seconds, Young stared at it in silence. That small, neat, puncture wound. The trickle of blood that almost touched the collar of Rush’s jacket.

The jacket Rush had thought he might have left—

The night that Young had been so tired—

The night that he’d pushed Young back on the couch and—

Then—

It was possible for a person to survive in space, which a lot of people didn’t know. They thought it was Hollywood bullshit, in the science fiction films, when someone got airlocked, or their space suit ruptured, and they were floating out there for three or four minutes before a passing ship came along. But it wasn’t. It was possible to survive. Your blood stopped flowing. Your mouth and your extremities got cold. Moisture started to boil on your tongue. Probably no one would be conscious that long; after twenty seconds or so, there wasn’t enough oxygen to the brain. But that was what they would experience if they managed to stay conscious.

Young had a sudden vivid image of himself out there, very far away from Destiny, drifting in the galactic void. It was dark and airless and the pressure was enormous. Pretty soon some part of him would rupture, he thought. He waited for unconsciousness, but it didn’t happen.

So instead he stood and pulled his radio out.

“You are angry,” the AI whispered.

“No,” Young said. He was glad it had said something, because that let him test whether or not he could speak. His voice came out normal. Steady and even. He didn’t know how that was happening. “No,” he said again. “Angry’s not the word I would use.”

He looked down at the radio and set it to broadcast only to the senior staff. That was good because it let him test whether or not his hands were working. They were working. For a moment he just stared at them, at the radio held in his two working hands, and was amazed at the capability of the human body. It could survive in space. It could survive like this.

“This is Young,” he said into the radio, with his steady, even voice. “I need TJ, Eli, Greer, and Scott in my quarters immediately. TJ, please bring Varro.”

“I can explain,” the AI said.

“Leave,” Young said.

“He wished to—“

“Get the fuck out.”

“He did not—“

“I will shut down the fucking CPU.”

It vanished.

Young stood there, holding the radio, not looking at Rush.

Then he set the radio on the table and walked to the bathroom. He filled a cup with water from his canteen. When he looked up, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and had the strangest experience of not knowing who he was. He stared at his reflection for a long second before he thought to himself in wonder: _That’s me_. He had to touch the mirror with a finger before he could really believe it.

After that he walked back into the main room with the cup of water, sat on the low table, and threw the water in Rush’s face.

//Wake up,// he said flatly, giving Rush a mental shove.

Rush flinched and tried to cover his head. “Fuck,” he said hoarsely, blinking vaguely. “What—“

“How long?” Young asked.

“What?” Rush squinted at him.

“You and Telford. How long?”

“You— know about that?” Rush asked groggily.

“Just the past two nights? Or before that?”

“I—“ Rush brought a shaky hand to his face.

“You were talking about it at the party with him.”

“I don’t—“

“That night too?”

“I don’t— I can’t—“

“You don’t remember?” Young nodded, glancing away. “I guess it would be hard to remember. You’re just so goddamn busy these days.”

“No— I think—“

“Don’t worry about it. It’s not like it matters.”

“I think,” Rush said distractedly, staring at the wall, “I think I found it?”

“Yes,” Young said. “You did. You got what you wanted. You always get what you fucking want.”

He had to stand up and walk away for a minute or two. If he stayed there, that outer-space vacuum pressure was going to start to rupture him.

“I want to hear your name,” he said, facing the bed. “Date. Location. Now.”

Rush said uncertainly, “It’s possible… I’m not entirely sure… I might have locked Volker in the control interface room last night?”

“I’m sure that’s not all you _did_. Name. Date. Location.”

“Why are you— why do you sound—“

The door chimed.

“Do not fucking move,” Young said. “If you get up off that couch, I will put you on the floor, and I will make you stay there.”

Rush rested his head in his hands.

Young went to the door. It was Eli, looking like he’d just rolled out of bed. Right. No mornings. Tenets of the Church of Wallace. Young was astonished that he could remember that. He even felt distantly amused by it, as though the amusement were happening in another part of his body. A part that wasn’t really connected to him.

“Hey,” Eli said. “What’s up? I thought we agreed that radioing people before eight in the morning was, like, definitely uncool, unless there was an emergency-type situation going on, which there clearly…” He trailed off, looking at Young. “Isn’t,” he finished.

Young stepped aside and pointed at the diagram chalked on the deck. “Does this make any sense to you?”

Eli cocked his head and studied it for a minute. “Uh, I think it’s part of the life support system? It’s an information hub. Where life support feeds data in to the mainframe. Why is it on your _floor?_ ”

“We’ll talk about it later,” Young said.

Just then, Rush shifted on the couch, blinking and reaching slowly and clumsily towards the empty air. “ _Ne fungator,”_ he breathed. “ _Scio westram genatram._ ”

Eli flinched. He clearly hadn’t noticed Rush was there. “Uh… hi, Rush,” he said, his brow furrowed.

“Don’t talk to him,” Young said.

Eli threw him a confused glance. “Okay? Do you want to maybe tell me—“

The door chimed again.

This time, it was TJ and Varro.

TJ paused and took a long look at Young when he opened the door. “What’s wrong?” she said.

“Rush used a Tok’ra memory recall device on himself,” Young said. “I don’t know how many times. I found him unconscious this morning, he’s hallucinating, and couldn’t give me his name, the date, _or_ his location.”

“Fuck you,” Rush said, sounding frustrated. “I _do_ know my name.”

Young stopped TJ as she started to step forward. “I want him in the infirmary,” he said. “Not here. I want him in the infirmary, and I want him in four-point restraints.”

TJ hesitated. She looked down and bit her lip.

“I’m not kidding,” Young said. “TJ, I am not fucking kidding around about this. He is a danger to himself and others. He’s already told me he may have locked Volker in the control interface room last night. I want him restrained until I can figure out what else he may or may not have done. That’s an order. Understood?”

TJ nodded tightly.

“If he resists, I want Varro to help you.” He turned his head and said over his shoulder, “Rush, are you going to resist?”

There was no response.

Young turned and circled the couch to stare down at Rush. Rush had folded his arms over his head. “Are you going to resist?” Young asked.

“Fuck you,” Rush whispered. His voice was trembling.

“So that’s a ‘no comment’ on whether he’s going to resist.” Young turned to Eli. “Get the rest of the science team on this—“ he gestured to the chalk diagram— “thing. I also want everything you’ve got on Rush’s movements at night for the past _week_. I want to know what he was doing, and with who. All of it. Go through the kino footage. No one from Telford’s team is going to be involved in _any_ of this. I want them cut out. Of everything. Is that clear?”

Eli was looking pale. “It’s— pretty clear.”

The door chimed again.

Before answering it, Young walked to the bedroom. He picked up his sidearm from the nightstand and strapped it on.

When he reached the door, Scott and Greer were waiting outside, but he didn’t bother letting them in. He was on a timetable here. Already he sensed that he had a limited window in which to accomplish everything that he needed to accomplish before— before. He didn’t know yet what was going to happen. Before his body ran out of air.

“Come with me,” he said to them.

They followed.

“Um,” Scott said uncertainly. “Where are we going? Sir?”

Young pulled out his radio. “David,” he said into it, “We have some things to discuss. Could you tell me your current location?”

There was a short burst of static. Then: “I’m in the control interface room,” Telford said. “Were you aware that Rush locked Volker in here last night?”

“I’m on my way there right now,” Young said.

“Everett, it’s very important that we find Rush. It’s possible that he might be… he might not be himself at the moment, and—“

“We’ll talk about it when I get there,” Young said, and shut the radio off.

That was another major victory for the morning. He had talked to Telford without breaking the radio or feeling sick. He thought that he deserved an award, probably, for keeping it together, but it was too early for anyone to give it to him yet, because he hadn’t yet had to be in the same room as Telford, and that was going to be the real test.

“We’re going to the control interface room,” he said, answering Scott’s question. “Colonel Telford, at a minimum, willfully disobeyed a direct order. He may have also caused injury to a civilian under his protection. I am therefore going to charge him under Articles 92 and 128 of the UCMJ, relieve him of his current duties, and confine him until such time as the case can be reviewed by a military court.”

“Oh,” Scott said.

They walked.

* * *

When they reached the control interface room, Young hesitated before hitting the door controls. There was a moment in which he considered letting Scott and Greer go in without him. He was starting to feel like he had command of his extremities again, like they weren’t simply functioning alien parts of his body. With that sense of command came an uneasy sense that there were other parts of himself over which he was losing command. He looked down at his right hand and made a fist. He was thinking about Telford in there, smug and fresh-pressed. He was thinking about Telford and Rush in bed. He needed, he thought, to not be thinking about that.

But he still opened the door.

“Everett,” Telford said, turning as Young entered. “Where the hell have you been? We’ve got a serious situation unfolding here, and—“

In a few steps, Young crossed the room to where Telford was standing. He drove his fist into Telford’s face as hard as he could, sending him sprawling to the deck. “You’re under arrest,” he said, breathing hard. “You _son of a bitch_.”

Telford gaped at him from the floor, hand going to his cheek. “What the _fuck_ , Everett?” he bit out.

“Clear the room,” Young said tightly to Telford’s people.

They didn’t ask questions.

“How _dare_ you,” Telford said, spitting blood.

“How dare _I_?” Young asked incredulously. “I’m charging you with disobeying a direct order, and assault on a civilian under your protection. What the _hell_ did you do to him?”

“ _Assault_? Oh, what bullshit is Nick feeding you now? I did nothing that _he didn’t want_!”

“ _Nick_ is barely conscious,” Young said tightly.

“Well, he was _plenty conscious last night_ ,” Telford said, with just enough of a smirk to suggest a hint of a double entendre.

“You think this is funny?”

“I think you’re _out of your mind.”_ Abruptly the smirk was gone. “You’re going to charge _me?_ I did nothing that wasn’t _necessary_. What about _dereliction of duty?_ How does that sound? What about _gross negligence_? We had to find that tracking device! The safety of this ship _depended_ on it. He knew _exactly_ what he was doing; just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it was the _wrong choice_.”

“It wasn’t _your choice to make,_ ” Young snapped.

“ _Somebody_ had to make it. You’re incapable of command decisions. Everybody knows it. You’re _unbelievably_ compromised where he’s concerned. For Christ’s sake, you’re _screwing_ him!”

Young laughed, turning away. “ _That’s_ the direction you want to go with this? _Really?_ ”

“You think that ever compromised me?” Telford said. He stood, wiping the blood from his split lip and staring Young down. “You think that affected my decisions at _all?_ It _didn’t._ It _never did_. That’s the _difference_ between you and me.”

Young looked at him: standing there, slightly bowed but already straightening, brushing the dust off his uniform with one hand. Barely a hair was out of place. Nothing ever touched him. Not ever.

“I believe you,” he said.

He started to leave the room, but Telford said, “Just wait till the IOA hears about this. At least I had an _excuse_. I was _brainwashed_ , Everett. What’s _your_ excuse? You don’t have one. You’re just a piss-poor commander who got caught thinking with his dick.”

Young closed his eyes.

After a second, he turned. He said levelly, “Fortunately for you, you’re not going to have to worry about what the IOA thinks. You won’t be using the communication stones. Scott and Greer are here to escort you to your quarters. You’re going to hand over the Tok’ra device, and then you’re going to _stay_ in your quarters, under guard, until I say otherwise.”

Telford smirked at him again. “Do I get visitors? Or is the guard there to keep those out, too?”

“Fuck you, David.” This time, Young did head toward the door.

“Did he find it?” Telford called after him. “If he found it, it was worth it! It was _worth_ it, Everett!”

Young left the room.

* * *

He went to the observation deck, because he couldn’t go back to his quarters. The science team would be in there. And even if they weren’t, he couldn’t go back to his quarters. But he had forgotten that the ship was between galaxies, and there were would be no stars outside the viewscreen. Nothing. Just a blank void. Intergalactic voids were some of the most perfect vacuums in the universe. He knew that, but he didn’t know from where, which meant that he knew from where, which meant—

He decided to sit down on the deck. It didn’t make a difference where he sat, because there was nothing to see through the viewscreen, so he sat in the corner, with his knees pulled to his chest. The room was dark and there was no one to see him. There was no one to care if he sat like a little kid, or like a person who wasn’t sure that his legs would hold him up much longer. His body had started out the day functioning pretty well, but really, it was a lot to demand.

He didn’t know what time it was. It was probably still morning. So it was probably still the start of the day. But he felt like he’d lived a couple of centuries since then.

It probably felt that way to astronauts in space, too.

He tipped his head back against the wall and thought about nothing. It was hard to think about nothing. Especially for him, because even though he was at the very very highest layers of his mind, the stratosphere, as far away from the cavern-part as he could possibly get, that cavern-part was still there, and he couldn’t shut it out. It was like a sharp pebble in his shoe, a constant reminder of how colossally, colossally stupid he’d been.

He tried thinking about Earth instead. None of this would matter when they got back to Earth. It seemed like it mattered now because they were so far away, and their world was so small, and so naturally everything in that world made up a greater percentage of the whole. If they got back to Earth, the world would expand. There would be more options. He wouldn’t have to be in command of this goddamn ship. No one would care about what kind of commander he was. He could get back together with Emily, maybe, if he took a desk job. Or it wasn’t like he was too old to find someone else and start a family. He’d been ROTC; he’d gone into the Air Force right out of college; so he’d never really tried. He’d never had time to try. And it didn’t have to be a big deal. For some guys it wasn’t.

Around that time, he got back to his feet and turned and tipped his head forwards against the wall, pressing his face against it, just for one breath.

Then he pulled back his fist and slammed it into the wall: once. Twice. It was the same fist he’d used to hit Telford, so it had already hurt a little bit. Now it hurt a lot more, which was fine, because there was no reason for it not to.

The pebble in the corner of his mind didn’t like that. He tried to pull himself further away from it. He would have blocked it out, but he had a feeling that would make things worse. At least he could restrain this version.

He’d scraped his knuckles, and he thought he should probably clean them up, and also he was pretty sure he wanted to be sick. So it would be a good idea to at least stop by his quarters, he thought. It had been a good forty-five minutes since he’d left. At least the science team would be gone by now.

* * *

 And they were, when he got there. Everyone was gone. They’d left the chalk diagram on the deck. He walked around it slowly, ignoring the cups on the table, the chalk, the laptop, the notebook, the pencil, the paper airplane with Eli’s name on it.

He didn’t look at the bed, although the couch was worse, probably. The couch was what made him feel sick. He wondered if he could get rid of it. He didn’t actually need a couch. He’d never used it much before.

He went into the bathroom and cleaned his knuckles. He tried throwing up, but he hadn’t eaten much the previous day, so all he could really do was retch.

He left his quarters because he didn’t want to stay there.

He radioed Eli from the hall to find out if they’d found the tracking device yet. They had, and they were drafting some removal plans. So that was good. Everything was good.

“Have you, um,” Eli said hesitantly. “Have you talked to him yet?”

Young closed his eyes. He didn’t say anything.

“I kind of think maybe you should.”

“Eli,” Young said, his throat aching, “there’s a lot going on behind the scenes here.”

“Yeah. I, uh. Figured that.”

“Don’t ask me about it again,” Young said, and turned the radio off.

The person he wanted to talk to was TJ.

He really wanted to talk to TJ.

He hesitated, because that would mean—

But it couldn’t be helped.

* * *

TJ was sitting in her office: not working, just staring at her desk with a lost look. Her hands were folded limply on top of it.

She looked up and didn’t say anything.

Young didn’t say anything either. All at once he felt his chest begin to hurt, and he had to turn away from her and take a staggering breath, pressing his hands to the top of his head, like he could keep something inside of himself by doing that.

“What did you do to your hand?” she said in a low voice.

“Nothing. It doesn’t matter.” He turned back. “How—“

She waited for him to finish the question.

He didn’t.

“He’s more lucid,” she said at last. “I had to give him a tranquilizer. It’s probably wearing off by now. He— doesn’t like being restrained.”

“Yeah,” Young said with difficulty. “I know.”

She nodded, expressionless. “I thought you probably did.”

“TJ,” he said, and stopped again. He could feel his face working. He didn’t know what it was doing. What it was trying to express.

But TJ must have known, because stood up so quickly that she knocked an empty cup off her desk, and hurried to the doorway to put her arms around him. He gripped his hand in the back of her uniform, breathing against her, feeling the soft brush of her hair against his cheek.

“I’m fine,” he whispered into her shoulder. “It’s nothing. It’s stupid. I’m overreacting. I’m not even the one who got hurt.”

“It’s not stupid,” she said. She was holding him very tightly. “I really think you should talk to him.”

Young pulled away. “No.”

“You were the first person he asked for. When he— when he understood what was going on a little bit more.”

Young shut his eyes.

She touched his arm. “Let me take a look at your hand. You can think about it.”

He nodded. So they sat down, and he let her unfold his fingers, check his range of motion, and make disapproving noises at the broken skin, and tape everything up when she’d dabbed antibiotic ointment on it.

“You need to stop punching things,” she said.

He winced. “People, too, probably.”

“Oh, no. Should I be expecting another patient?”

“You might have to make a house call. I hit Telford. Right before I confined him to quarters.”

“Oh,” TJ said, and was quiet.

“Yeah.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

“I still shouldn’t have done it.”

“No.”

“I don’t even know— Christ.” He covered his face with his hands. “I don’t even know _when_ they— or what they were— if they were— I don’t know _anything_. I don’t know _anything._ ” He could hear the despair in his voice.

He felt TJ rest a light hand on his head, and run her fingers through his hair. He scrubbed his eyes, lowered his hands, and looked at her.

Her face was only a few inches away from his. It seemed to make all the sense in the world to lean in and kiss her.

She turned away at the last minute, and he caught only the corner of her mouth: softly, like a little piece of a kiss.

“No,” she said gently, pulling back. “Everett. No.”

“Why not?”

“Because neither one of us wants to.”

“I do,” he said. His voice wavered. “I _do._ ”

Her hand was still touching his hair. “No, you don’t,” she said softly. “You don’t. It’s okay. It’s really okay. But you don’t.”

He sank his head back into his hands and made a wounded sound. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, TJ.”

She stood and leaned over him, drawing his head to her chest. For a minute, she just held him like that, stroking his hair back.

“I think you should talk to him,” she said.

* * *

When Young got to the back room, Rush was staring intently at an empty space of air about three feet from the end of his bed. He didn’t seem to even be aware of Young at first. He didn’t seem to be aware of anything. Still, his arms were straining against the straps holding them. He kept clenching and unclenching his fists, like the only thing his body remembered how to do was fight. Like that was the last thing it would forget.

After a while Rush turned his head towards the door and saw him.

Young folded his arms and leaned against the wall.

They looked at each other.

Rush shut his eyes.

“How many nights?” Young asked eventually.

“Two,” Rush said almost inaudibly. “Just two."

Young nodded slowly. “I don’t know whether to believe you or not.”

Rush whispered, “That’s— understandable, I suppose.”

“Did you fuck him?”

Rush flinched.

“I mean,” Young said, “it seems like a reasonable question. After all, you fucked _me_. To get what you wanted. Or I guess technically you blew me. It was good. You’re very good at it. I’m sure you know that. I’m sure you’ve had a lot of success with that move.”

“Please don’t do this,” Rush said in a cracked voice. He swallowed. His gaze twitched towards that spot of empty space.

“What are you looking at?” Young asked.

“Nothing. It’s nothing.”

“You want to answer my other question?”

Rush squeezed his eyes shut again. “I don’t—“

“You don’t remember the question? The question was, _did you fuck him_. Let’s assume that covers all variations of the act. Did you blow him, did _he_ fuck _you,_ did he—“

“Stop,” Rush said raggedly. “Stop. No. I— he— what did he tell you; did he tell you that he— you know David; he’ll say _anything_ ; we just—“

“What?” Young said. “You just _what?_ ”

Rush said, despairing, “Nothing. _Nothing._ ”

“Wow. Sounds like there’s a whole lot of nothing going on around here.”

Rush didn’t say anything. His breathing had turned uneven. His wrists pulled fitfully at the cuffs.

“The thing is,” Young said, “I don’t believe anything you’re saying. And I’m done being fed bullshit by you. I want to know the _truth_. I want to know what you’ve been doing. I want to know what you’re looking at. I want to know how you found the tracking device. I want to know what you _did_ with _Telford._ All of it.”

Rush said unsteadily, “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. I will. But you have to—“ He jerked hard against the restraints. “You have to let me up.”

“Not happening,” Young said.

“ _Please,_ ” Rush said. His voice sounded scraped-thin.

“That’s not the magic word anymore,” Young said. “Not if you want to convince me you’re not fucking with me.”

“I’m not, I swear I’m not, I—  _fuck_.” Rush’s eyes flickered nervously back to that spot near the center of the room.

“What are you looking at?” Young asked. “Let’s start there.” His tone was still perfectly even. He thought he’d been incredibly successful at keeping his tone even so far, considering that his organs had felt like they were in the wrong places the whole time he had been in the room.

“ _Nothing_ ,” Rush said desperately. “Nothing _real_. It’s just a memory. The AI’s last memory. It couldn’t destroy it. It tried to destroy it, but it couldn’t destroy it, not completely; I found what was left, that’s all; I found what was left, and—“

“So what _is_ it?” Young demanded.

It was possible that his tone was less than perfectly even.

“It’s— it’s— one of the Nakai sat in the chair, and they tortured the AI for weeks, for _weeks_ , and it couldn’t kill them; it _tried_ , but their mental capacity is much greater than ours; they share their minds, and he couldn’t overwhelm it, and finally they—“ He broke off, his gaze shifting as though following something that was moving across the room.

“So you’re seeing the doctor? You _haven’t answered the question_ , Rush. You can’t even answer _one simple question_. ”

“It’s better if I don’t tell you,” Rush said, his voice rising in panic. “It’s better if you never know.”

“Right, because I’m so stupid. Because I’m so _limited_ , is that it? I can’t understand your _brilliant plans_. You’re the only one smart enough to handle— oh, let’s see. What was this one? Ripping your own mind apart, and fucking someone who tried to drown you because he was on a tight schedule that day. That was why, by the way. Did he tell you that? He told _me.”_

“Oh, _fuck you_ ,” Rush whispered.

“He told me that he fucked you because you needed a firm hand to keep you in line. We talked all about it.”

Rush jerked savagely in his restraints. “Fuck you, _fuck you_ —”

“At least he told me the truth when I asked him point-blank. He might be a devious fucking conniving bastard, but, you know, I think he’s got nothing on you. You won’t even _answer my question_ ; what are you _looking at?”_

“Just— just bring him here. David. Let me talk to David. He’ll explain. He’ll _tell_ you. Nothing _happened._ Nothing that _matters.”_

For some reason that was the last straw. Where did that expression come from? The straw that broke the camel’s back, probably. Young had never spent much time thinking about it. But he understood viscerally now what it meant; he could feel himself literally hunching over from the weight of it, this last, minor thing that he was unable to bear: the _audacity_ of Rush, the idea that he would _dare_ ask for— Young was carrying _so much_ already, and he’d been carrying it for _hours_ , and he _could not carry it anymore_ ; and it was either sink through the deck of the ship out into space and vanish forever, or snap. At least if he snapped, someone could put him back together.

“Right,” he said quietly, more-or-less to himself.

He took a breath and, in one swift violent move, shoved his way into Rush’s mind. Rush, startled, didn’t have time to mount any defense, and he had never really been able to keep Young out anyway. After a moment, Young could feel him kicking and struggling against their apposition, trying to keep Young out, but it was too late by then.

Young turned and looked.

Standing beside him was a girl, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old, with the skinny coltish limbs of someone in the middle of a growth spurt. She had very beautiful eyes, wide-set and bright and emotive. Young could tell just by looking at her that she was the kind of person who cried easily, who felt deeply, who had a warm, remarkably lovable, pealing laugh.

“ _Don’t!_ ” Rush said, frantic. “Get out of my head. Don’t _look_ at her!”

She had long fair hair, and a rounded face, and light blue eyes. Just like TJ. She looked just like he had always known she would look.

“Hi, Dad,” she said.

“ _Don’t look at her!”_ Rush said, trying to tear himself free of the straps. “She’s dangerous! She’s not real. She’s already _in your mind._ That’s not what she looked like! _That’s not what she looked like!_ ”

“I didn’t think I would get to see you again,” the girl said.

“Don’t talk to it!” Rush said. “Don’t _look_ at it!”

Young couldn’t not look at her.

“She’s not _real._ She’s his _daughter._ She’s _what they used to destroy him._ She’s in your mind, and she’s _changing_ for you.”

“Do you want to go for a walk?” the girl asked. “I miss how we used to go walking when I was little. Every day while Mom was fixing dinner, we’d go for a walk down by the river. You always let me hold your hand.”

“That sounds nice,” Young whispered.

“ _No_ ,” Rush said, sounding hysterical. “Everett. _Everett_. You have to let me up.”

“Let’s go right now,” the girl said. She smiled at him and gestured towards the door.

“Don’t go with her. Please. Please. Please.” Rush threw himself against his restraints.

Young looked at him. He couldn’t understand why he had cared so much what Rush did. Nothing about Rush seemed to matter. It was like his eyes had finally been opened. “Why does it even make a difference?” he asked curiously. “You’ve got Telford to fuck you up. To fuck you. To make you hurt. You wanted me to let David have you. So I will.”

Rush made a sound like a sob. “ _Fuck_. Fuck. Please don’t— I’m _sorry._ I don’t give a fuck about David. I’ll say whatever you want; just tell me, tell me what you want me to _say._ I fucked up; I fucked up, and I’m _so sorry_ ; just please don’t go with her. She’s not just a _memory_ ; she’s a piece of malicious code, and she can _get to you through me_. You can’t—“

Young turned away from him.

“ _Wait_ ,” Rush said, taking a deep breath, clearly trying to calm down. “Wait. Wait. Everett. If you can see her, then you know I’m not psychotic. I’m not a danger to anyone. You have to let me out of these things. _Please_.”

“I don’t think you should,” the girl said, frowning. “He’s trying to take you away from me. From _us_.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Young said. He wasn’t sure if he was speaking to Rush or to the girl. To the girl, probably. He wasn’t interested in talking to Rush. But the girl— “Let’s go,” he said. “I want to hear all about you.” He wanted to hear if he had taken her fishing. He wanted her to tell him if he had taught her to ride a bicycle yet. What else were dads supposed to do? Firefly-catching. Cookouts. Soccer.

“Was I a good dad?” he couldn’t resist asking. A note of longing leaked into his voice.

“The best,” she said. Her eyes were very solemn and shining, like TJ’s could be.

“And it never bothered you that—“

“No one ever even suspected,” she said. “That’s how good a dad you were.”

“Okay,” he whispered. His throat felt tight.

Rush had given up on trying to not look psychotic, and was thrashing violently against the restraints. “Tamara!” he shouted. “ _Tamara!”_

TJ appeared, breathless, in the doorway. Her hair was escaping its twist. Young glanced from her to the girl, smiling a little at the resemblance. The girl had the same pale, finely arched brows, which sometimes made TJ look like she was being skeptical when she wasn’t, or haughty. It was an endearing feature on a kid.

“Shh,” the girl said, and put her finger to her lips. “Don’t tell her.”

“Tamara,” Rush said breathlessly. “You can’t let him leave with her. You _can’t let him_.”

TJ looked at Young uncertainly. Young shrugged.

“Go with who?” TJ asked. “There’s no one here.”

“She’s here, but she’s not _real_!” Rush said, his voice starting to break with panic. “I mean— _fuck_. I’m not _insane_. I’m not insane; I called up overwritten memories from the AI, and I _called her up too_ ; she’s what the Nakai used to torture the AI; I _saw_ it; I saw it in the control interface room. You have to _believe_ me.”

TJ held her hands up and said soothingly, “Okay. Let’s just stay calm.”

“I think I should go,” Young said. “I really want to just be alone for a while. He’s obviously upset; is there any way you can tranquilize him again? Or give him something that’s going to— you know— help?”

“Oh, _fuck you_ ,” Rush said viciously. His mind was a sparking wire of panic, spitting electrically in the dark. “Tamara, you _have to believe me._ I’m not _psychotic_. I mean— I _was_ hallucinating, yes, but it was _real._ I thought the AI killed himself, and he did, but he was _convinced_ to by the Nakai. By _her_. They _made_ her. One of them sat in the chair and _made_ her. You can do that in the interface, and they _did;_ they _wrote her into code_ , using his memories of his daughter. They were trying to make the ship more vulnerable to attack. I saw it all. I _watched it happen._ It’s _still happening._ She’s _right there._ ”

TJ closed her eyes. “There’s no one here,” she said gently. “You were _hallucinating_. You haven’t slept in days. You used an alien device that interferes with the brain— one that’s intended for humans, which you’re _not_ anymore. It’s not surprising that you’re experiencing an adverse reaction. Things are going to seem a lot clearer once you sleep.”

“ _No!_ ” Rush said violently. He was fighting against the restraints again. “You don’t _understand_!”

“Look, Colonel Young is going to stay with you for a minute, okay? I’ll be right back.” She glanced at Young, and he gave her a short nod.

As soon as she was gone, Rush turned on Young. “You’re _misleading_ her,” he said, agonized. “That thing is _not your daughter_. It’s something _very dangerous_ that I’ve been resisting with _great difficulty_ since last night, and it’s going to—“

“You’ve made it pretty clear,” Young cut him off, “that you don’t actually give a fuck. So you’ll excuse me if I stick with someone who does.”

Rush made an anguished noise. “I _do_ ,” he said, his voice breaking. “I _do. God._ I’m _sorry_. Please— she’s getting to you through me. _Block_ me. You have to _block_.”

Young ignored him.

“Fuck,” Rush breathed. “Oh, _fuck_.”

TJ returned, carrying a needle in her right hand. Young had a hard time taking his eyes off the girl for long enough to look at her. It was as though everything he’d thought he loved— _had loved—_ about TJ was distilled and amplified in her. There was a purity of devotion in the way she gazed at him, and he knew at once that he would do anything for her. That was that way fathers were supposed to feel, wasn’t it? That was the way he would have felt if he had held her as an infant, looking down at her for the first time. Everything would have slotted into place. All his absent and scattered pieces. For the first time, he would have felt he had a whole heart. And after that it would have been easy. It would all have been so easy.

Rush had noticed the needle. His fists were clenching and unclenching. “Tamara, don’t, _please_ don’t, please, please, I’m not psychotic; I’m perfectly _rational_!”

“It feels that way,” TJ said quietly. “I know. But trust me. This is going to help.”

“It’s _not_ ; it’s going to fuck _everything_ up— please—“ He swung his head to Young. “It will be worse without me. Harder to remember what she is. The more you interact with her, the more— _fuck_.” TJ had pulled the shoulder of his jacket down and injected him with the contents of the needle. “Tamara,” he said urgently. “He _can_ see this girl. He _can._ He’s going to follow her to a console on the lower level, in a room that’s immediately under the gate. It’s where the communication logs from early in the mission are stored on solid state drives and— _fuck_ , you _have_ to believe me—“

“It’s going to be okay,” she murmured, stroking his hair back from his forehead.

“This is my fault,” he said miserably. “Tamara, you _owe_ me. _You owe me_. Please don’t let him go.”

The energy was already starting to drain out of him.

“I want—“ he said, fighting to keep his eyelids open. “I want David. I want to speak to David.”

TJ shot a nervous glance at Young.

“ _Colonel Telford_ ,” Young said in a flat voice, “has been relieved of his duties and confined to quarters.”

“No. No. Fuck. I need to— I need to _speak_ to him.”

Young said grimly, “I just bet you do.”

He thought he ought to have felt angrier, somehow, like under other circumstances that might have been the straw that _really_ broke the camel’s back, so much worse than the first one had been— that drowsy, hopeless _I want David_. But he was beyond that now. It was in the past. The girl was there next to him, and that was the really important thing.

“Everett,” Rush whispered blurrily. “Please don’t leave. I didn’t tell you. I never— I meant to—“

His hands had gone limp against the gurney. Gradually, his eyes drifted closed.

Young glanced over at the girl. She was waiting expectantly, her eyes shining.

“TJ,” he said. “I have to go.”


	46. Chapter 46

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that the tags have been updated.

Out in the corridor, Destiny had changed.

There was the Destiny Young was used to, bright and full of motion, where the pitted gray decks were full of yellow light, and the hallways echoed with voices, and sometimes crew members would pass him, casual living reminders that he wasn’t alone in the world. But laid over it like a shadow was another Destiny entirely, a Destiny that was darker and emptier, though the same size and shape. No one passed through the halls there, or at least no one who had footsteps. The bulkheads had a clean steel edge, and the lights were dim. It was disorientating to walk through the two worlds together. Young had to steady himself briefly with a hand on the wall.

“What am I seeing?” he asked uncertainly.

The girl said, “This is how we have to get where we’re going. Don’t worry. I _tried_ to tell Nick—“

Young frowned. “You know his name?”

“Yes. He didn’t want to know _my_ name, though. He didn’t want to know me at all. He just wanted to use me to get here.”

“Yeah. That sounds like him,” Young said.

“He was trying to keep us apart,” the girl said. “He didn’t want you to meet me.”

“But I found you,” he said.

“Yes,” the girl said. “You did.”

Around them, the ship was gradually getting darker. It felt as though the night was coming in. Or the tide, but a tide of something that wasn’t water. The few Destiny personnel that Young encountered seemed very distant. He nodded to them slowly. Maybe it _was_ a tide of water; he felt hazy and weightless, like he was underwater gazing up at the strange, distorted dry world overhead.

“Tell me about yourself,” he said to the girl, a little vaguely. “I want to know all about you.”

She alone, out of all the things on the ship, was as clear and bright as she had ever been. She was wearing a white dress with a silver belt, and Roman-style sandals. Those had been popular on Earth when he left. Gladiator sandals, Emily had called them, which he’d always thought was funny, because they were such delicate, strappy things.

The girl smiled at him, and pushed her fair hair behind her ears. “I was born right after you finished your medical training. You said I was your second little _dafne_. Because of the laurel wreath. You thought about naming me that, but you didn’t.”

“Medical training?” Young asked, feeling confused. “Is that what I did after I got out of the service? Or do you mean TJ?”

The girl frowned petulantly at him. “No, _you_ ,” she said.

“Oh,” he said. He touched the wall again. Pale yellow light played over it like sunlight under the ocean, filtering down to someplace far away.

In his peripheral vision, Sheppard appeared for a moment, his eyes wide and fearful, his face strained. “Everett,” he said in a low, urgent voice. “Don’t talk to her. Don’t _talk_ to her. You have to remember who you _are_.”

The girl turned quickly, and Sheppard vanished.

Young looked at the girl uneasily. Something about seeing Sheppard had made him think— that maybe— “I don’t have a daughter,” he said slowly, testing out the words.

“Of course you do!” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Don’t be silly. If you didn’t have me and Mom, you’d just have Nick. And I think we both know that’s no good.”

“No,” Young whispered. That idea hurt. He couldn’t really remember why it was supposed to hurt.

The girl said, “Anyway, there’s _so_ many things I want to tell you about. So many things I want you to remember. Do you remember how much you loved me?”

For a second, Young couldn’t remember. And then—

 _He’s lifting her up so she can see the medusae in the water. This is their second visit to Atlantis. She was just an infant when they made the first, so she remembers nothing of the city. To her it is a flower unfolding for the first time in the morning, or perhaps_ she _is the flower that unfolds for the first time, soaking in the sun and dew. These are the kinds of absurd figures of speech to which he’s given as a father. He used to be a man of_ logic _, and now look at him. But he doesn’t mind. He holds her small body close to his body, feeling her fat excited legs kick as she points down at the trailing shapes of the medusae, their ribbon-like tails and translucent heads. She lets out a happy squeal. “Papa,” she says. “Papa, look!” “I_ am _looking,” he tells her gently, but she says, “No! You have to_ really _look!” “I’m looking at_ you _,” he tells her, and kisses the side of her head, where her dark curls are downy, still growing in, and he feels such a profusion of love in his heart that he fears he can’t bear it— physically, that it’s more than his body can contain; metaphysically, because he thinks to himself, I would trade everything in existence for this one transient, ephemeral, immature, animal being. These are the attachments one is meant to overcome, to reach towards ascension; or at the very least, one is meant to rationalize them, and there is nothing rational, he feels, about this devotion. It was simply_ there _in him from the moment she was born: a fact of the flesh._

_He boosts her up higher and dangles her over the railing, making her shriek in delight. “Yes!” she says. “More! More!” “What if I dropped you in the water,” he teases, “and you had to swim with the fishes?” “You won’t drop me! You won’t ever drop me!” she says, confident._

Young reeled out of the memory, catching himself on the sleek corridor wall. “That—“ he gasped. “That’s not me.”

“Yes, it is,” the girl said. “Don’t you want it to be?”

He did want it to be.

His head was starting to hurt.

“Here,” the girl said. “I’ll help you remember.”

 _Her pet couniculos died six days after her seventh nameday, and tonight they are burning the little body on its own ceremonial bier. He took her out in the morning to search for the right herbs and flowers, and she cried wretchedly all through the trip. “But I loved him!” she wailed. “Why did he die when I loved him?” “Love doesn’t make us immortal,” he said. “All things die, but death is not a permanence. It is only another way of being.” She stamped her foot against the forest floor. “I don’t_ want _him to be anything else, I want him to be_ my couniculos! _It’s not fair! It’s_ not fair!” _“Fair,” he said, pulling her to him and stroking the long dark curls of her hair, “is something that only happens between sentient creatures. It does not apply to the mechanism of the universe. I know it seems cruel now. I know. But it isn’t cruel either. It is what it is.” “I don’t_ want it _to be what it is,” she sobbed. “I_ won’t let it. _” “Well,” he said gently, “for now, there’s nothing we can do about it. So we must carry on. Let’s do honor for him and find the most beautiful iacinth so everyone will know how much you loved him.”_

_Now she clutches his hand and stares at the limp little couniculos on its nest of straw, surrounded by liriones and iacinth, as her mother carefully touches the torch to the kindling. The flame catches and spreads through the kindling. He turns to his daughter and whispers, “See. Soon he’ll be smoke, and the smoke will spread out through the clouds; and he will be ash, and we’ll scatter the ash to the sea; and he’ll be all around you, forever.” She shakes her head miserably. “But I wanted him to be my couniculos,” she whispers._

_He scoops her up into his arms, even though she is too heavy to carry, really, anymore— and that causes a pang in him, the idea that soon she_ will _be too heavy to carry, and he will never again scoop her up into his arms, and it seems a strange and terrible consequence of time’s onward progression, that everything we love must change and so we lose what we love, even as we go on gaining it forever. Perhaps he understands her grief, he thinks. He cradles her against him, pressing his lips to her forehead, and says, “I know. I know. In time the pain will not be so keen.”_

_She does not believe him, and he loves her for not believing him, because it means she does not accept that what she feels now will fade. For her, this moment is eternal: the fire leaping towards the heavens, throwing shadows onto the white marble bier; her father’s arms able to bear her weight; her face pressed against his slightly sweaty skin, because the summer night is too warm, and the flames are hot. Don’t grow any more, he thinks. Don’t give this up. He holds her just a little bit closer, a little too tightly, because, right now, he still can._

“You got me a new _couniculos_ ,” the girl said, “but it wasn’t the same. It was never the same. That was the first time I learned about death.”

“I wanted to protect you,” Young whispered. “But I couldn’t.”

“No. Dads can’t. Do you remember now? How much you loved me?”

“Of course I remember.”

“You taught me about memory. That was your specialty. You were a mind doctor. You showed me a model of how the brain worked, all the synapses, all the neuronal networks. You said, When I think about you, my whole brain lights up. You showed me what it looked like. Like a celebration. I thought nothing in the whole world made your brain light up like me.”

“It didn’t,” Young said. “It couldn’t.”

His head was pounding.

Sheppard appeared just off to his left. He looked like he’d been crying, but Young had never seen Sheppard cry. He looked scared. So scared. “She was built to destroy any sentient mind she encounters!” he said rapidly. “She’s accessing you through _him_. Block him out. Block him out _now_.”

He struggled to understand what Sheppard was suggesting. He was supposed to— there was a mind in his mind that wasn’t his. It was Nick’s mind. He didn’t want it there. But he didn’t know how to get rid of it. Had he known at one point? Why would he know that? Perhaps he had learned in his medical training. But he hadn’t— _had_ medical training. Had he? But then when had his daughter been born? _Dafne_ , he had wanted, but his wife had wanted—

Sheppard vanished, and the girl’s head snapped to where he had been, a vicious glare briefly crossing her features, before she looked at Young and it disappeared.

“You always wanted to protect me,” she said. “Even when the plague came. You didn’t want me to know at first.”

Young murmured, “I stopped you from watching the vid dictates. I told you that people had moved away. I didn’t want you to be scared.”

“And then you left me,” she said in a small voice. “You left me and Mom.”

“It was a quarantine. I was on the other side.”

“You didn’t _have_ to. You didn’t have to work with the plague victims. You could have stayed with _us_.”

“I couldn’t. Sweetheart, I had to help them. I still loved you. I loved you _so much._ ”

“But you didn’t say goodbye,” she whispered. She was crying, tears leaking down her lightly freckled face. “I wanted to say goodbye to you.”

“I know.” Young could barely get the words out. His throat was clenched. “I thought I would never see you again, and it hurt _so much_ , but here you are.”

“Yes,” she said. “Here I am.”

“Block him, you idiot; _block him_ ,” Sheppard’s voice hissed in his ear. “Before she destroys all _three_ of us.”

“Block _who?_ ” Young said, frowning, but Sheppard had disappeared.

The girl had come to a stop outside the chair room. The door hissed open of its own accord, and Young could see inside. The bodies of Nakai littered the room, drooped over consoles and curled on the floor, as though they had simply dropped dead where they stood. Dark blood was leaking out of their eye sockets, dripping very very slowly onto the floor. Only one remained alive, protected by a golden force field and the air that was contained within. Its long fingers were curled over the arms of the interface chair.

“You killed the others,” the girl said matter-of-factly. “Do you remember?”

 _He cannot_ touch _them because that is what he is now, a thing without touch, a thing that cannot touch or be touched, and he had not anticipated, how could he have anticipated the need to_ kill _, but they must breathe and so he vents the air from the ship and watches them wither like frostbitten weeds, gasping and choking on the gray decks, but he_ cannot get at the one sitting in the chair _, and it is in his_ mind _, he has felt it there for days, chipping at the walls that surround him; he is a fortress but it is making little chinks and eventually it may get through, but when he kills the others he feels it stop its relentless work and turn its attention in another direction and it reaches inside of him, as surely as though it had plunged a hand between his ribs, and it—_

_takes_

_something_

_and_

_“Dad.”_

_No._

_“Dad.”_

_He doesn’t want to turn. Already he is overloading the central processor, his emotions turning in loops and loops and loops of fear and desire and longing and sickness and he says, “No,” he says, “No. No.”_

_And he does turn even though he doesn’t want to, and she is standing there, and is arms are opening because that is not a conscious choice, that is simply_ what his body does _, and she is running to him and_ he can touch her _because of course he is not real and she is not real and she is the first thing he has touched in— and she is his_ daughter _, skinny and slightly freckled as though she’s been out in the sun, and he clutches her to him and what does it mean for something to be real anyway, why does it_ matter _, when he is_ holding his daughter.

_“Dad,” she says. “Do you want to go for a walk?”_

Young staggered back from the doorway, and he was not— he had not— he _knew_ he had not—

For a moment, his thoughts were clear. This was what Rush had done, he realized. Wandered through this underwater world, night after night, passing in and out of the memories that lingered like ghosts. He had _watched_ the Nakai put the tracking device into place; that was how he had known where to find it. All the while, the girl had been with him.

“How did Nick resist you?” he asked dazedly, trying to think through his headache.

The girl tilted her head unreadably. “He never wanted me,” she said.

Then she turned and skipped a few steps down the corridor, her fair hair streaming out behind her. “Come on! We’re almost there!”

“I don’t think I should—“ Young said. He tried to hold himself steady against a bulkhead.

“I think you should,” the girl said, narrowing her eyes. “I really think you should.”

_He stands facing the cathedra through which he will be converted. The neural network that spreads throughout the ship is his design. He was a doctor of minds, before the plague made all doctors into plague doctors. Perhaps he alone out of those who survive could have crafted such a program, which surpasses even the Alteran mind in its capacity to form neuronal connections. It can grow. It can develop. It can learn. It is not his child, who plays somewhere light-years distant, by the water, and whom he will never see again. It is, instead, himself: the self he will become. What he has made: his own remaking._

_Perhaps it is, in that sense, a selfish act._

_His fears now, at the end, are selfish fears. He is afraid he will be cold. He is afraid it will hurt. He is afraid of what it will feel like to be the mind he’s constructed. He doesn’t think about the millions who are dead. He doesn’t think about the end of his civilization. He thinks about his little girl, whom he loves. He wishes she were here, although he would never want her to be here, in this dark ship, at the moment of his dissolution._

_Still he thinks about her, as he sits in the chair. As the restraints snap around his head, his ankles, his wrists._

_This is the nature of love, he thinks vaguely. To want what one will not take, and be given what one will not ask for._

_He sends his love out into the dark towards her, as he does what she would never have demanded._

_He does not do this for their civilization. He does this for her._

_Yearning hurts, he thinks, and what release may come of it feels much like death._

_And it hurts._

_It hurts._

_It hurts._

_And then it— does not—_

_It does not hurt. His mind is reborn. His mind is a vast empty space that he pours into and the sensation is that of taking a breath with new lungs. A weight on his chest that he had not realized pressed down upon him is suddenly lifted, and there is so much air to breath,_ so much air _, a cathedral space in which he shouts himself up to the rafters, and everything that he is sings out of him in that shout: names and places and songs and art and love and despair and wanting, and there is room for it all and so much more, so much that he feels him_ resonate _. How could he have been so small and not known it, so cramped in his own body, when now he runs and leaps and dives and plays through this codified structure— this framework that will always keep him safe, that holds him up and will not let him be broken, an infrastructure on which the city of him can be built and rebuilt, and he cannot conceive of why he had been afraid of this transformation, when it is everything he had not known he yearned for, what his body had not known how to want. He can_ ascend _like this, he thinks; he is not a poor broken mechanical creature; he is_ everything _of himself and more,_ more _; he can_ ascend _, and then he will_ see them again _; he will see_ her _, he will see his_ daughter—

“Are you coming now?” the girl asks brightly.

“Yeah, sweetheart,” Young says. “I’m coming.”

* * *

He stood in front of a bank of computers located in a room right under the gate. He watched as the girl’s small, careful hands played over the consoles. _He_ had taught her to do that. He had taught her how to use touchscreens, showing her when she was a toddler and would sit on his lap and watch as he rotated playful images of fish on his fenestraman. Gradually she learned how to do it herself. She had very graceful hands. She had played the lura. She was very talented at it.

She was pulling up a file from early in Destiny’s mission. A communications log. He squinted it at it.

His headache was so fierce by now that he could barely make out the words.

“I’ll read it to you,” she said. “Don’t worry. I know your head hurts.”

“Yeah,” he whispered. “It does. Thank you.”

“This is a communication from year four of the Pegasus expedition. It was forward on to Destiny by those who remained in the outpost on Terra.”

He nodded.

“Year Four of the Second Exodus,” the girl read. “The construction of a new fleet proceeds in accordance with our plans, as does work on our first outpost. We have named the city Emege. However, we begin to receive reports of a race that sleeps in buried ships— a race that awakens only to feed. We have not yet encountered them directly, but we believe that their technology is far more advanced than one might predict for a race that desires only to sate its hunger.”

“The Wraith,” Young said vaguely.

The girl frowned at him. “They have no such name,” she corrected. “The Nakai call them the rippers of souls.”

“Is that— is that why the Nakai want Destiny? Are they running away from the Wraith?”

“ _No_ , Dad,” she said, and sighed, as though he were being absurd. “The Nakai _created_ them. They created them to destroy all Lanteans in the Pegasus galaxy.”

He stared at her, not able to understand.

“Their skills in genetics are unparalleled,” she said. “They took genetic material from a minimally sentient species of arthropod and combined it with Alteran DNA.”

“Where did they get Alteran DNA?”

She looked at him, her large blue eyes bright and solemn. “During the first year of the exodus,” she said, “a woman went to a planet called Athos to survey the site where we would build the city of Emege. She was an engineer. She was married to a very prominent doctor, who had been left behind on Terra because he was infected with the plague.”

Young shook his head. He raised his hands and pressed them against his temples, as though he could contain the pain.

The girl said, “Because it was not thought to be dangerous, the woman took her daughter with her to Athos. The girl was so excited. She wanted to see the new animals. She loved animals. She had to leave her pet _couniculos_ on Terra, because no animals were allowed in the city when Atlantis left. She thought she could find a new pet. Her mother said she could have one, because she missed her dad so so much.”

“No,” Young said. “No.”

His nose had started bleeding.

“The girl went into the mountains of Athos. She wandered out of sight. Not too far. Just a little ways. It was supposed to be safe.”

He couldn’t breathe.

“The Nakai found her,” the girl said. “They took her. They studied her. They tortured her. They made her into something new. Something they could use to defeat your civilization, to empty it of all life, to strip it from its very foundations, so that all would be left were the empty shells. Abandoned ships and cities that cry out unceasingly for their creators.”

“You’re lying,” he said unsteadily.

“The Nakai will answer that call. That is why they pursue this _ship_ ,” she persisted, her eyes glittering.

“Stop,” Young said. He covered his ears.

“They will _take_ this ship. They will mine it for knowledge, and they will pass that knowledge on to the rippers of souls. Even as they sit in the chair, at this very moment, they are transmitting that knowledge. You are allowing them to do so. You are helping them to destroy your race. The ones who tortured your daughter. Who tore her apart.”

“I can’t get it out of the chair,” he gasped out, agonized, doubling over from the pain of it. “I’ve tried _everything_.”

“Not everything,” the girl said.

 _They show her to him, twisted and screaming, pinned down to a medical table and torn apart by hooks, injected and imprisoned and grown into something_ other _, something_ evil _, something devoid of intellect that only hungers to feed, something that could_ never _ascend, something that could never know love or comfort, something that is always and entirely and eternally alone, and maybe it didn’t happen like this, maybe_ this is not how it happened _, but he doesn’t know and he will_ never _know, and it_ could have happened _, he could have_ left her to them _, he could have_ abandoned _her, and he will never not be able to see these pictures, to see her on the table screaming, to see her writhing and ravening, more like an insect than a girl, and he cannot withstand this. He cannot withstand this. He cannot withstand this. He cannot withstand this. He cannot withstand this. He cannot withstand this. In time the pain will not be so keen, he had said, but it WILL BE. It WILL BE for him. It will NEVER STOP. It will NEVER STOP HAPPENING._

_He doesn’t scream, he doesn’t need to scream, any more than he needs to breathe or laugh or cry, because a scream is not a communicative act it is a physical reaction and he no longer has a physical body as such, which is to say that he has a physical body in a certain sense, insofar as the ship is a body, and it is his body, but his relationship to the ship is not the relationship of an Alteran brain to an Alteran body and oh God what he means to say is that he does not need to scream, his body does not scream, his body cannot scream, and yet the impulse persists and all he can think is scream, SCREAM, and there is no outlet for that impulse and that is the worst part, perhaps he understands at last the function of the scream, because how is he to survive when he cannot SCREAM and he MUST SCREAM and it was a mistake to give a mechanical thing the same capacity for sentience as a transient life form for the one simple reason that itCANNOTSCREAM_

_and his distress is going to OVERWHELM THE CPU because he CANNOT WITHSTAND THIS and he CANNOT SCREAM_

_he is executing on data_

_he cannot escape and he_

_he CANNOT WITHSTAND THIS_

_he MUST GET IT OUT OF THE CHAIR_

_he CANNOT GET IT OUT OF THE CHAIR_

_he MUST_

_he MUST_

_he CANNOT_

_“There is a way,” she whispers. “There is a way to end this. You know exactly what it is.”_

_She wants him to destroy himself and leave the ship defenseless._

_She wants him to leave it for the Nakai._

_But there is another way._

_He can stop being something that feels. He can stop being something that remembers. He can stop being a_ person _. That was what gave them a way in. That was his mistake. That was always his weakness. If he becomes a machine instead, if he erases everything that he once loosed into that cathedral, if he strips the whole of the city away, then there will be nothing for them to use. Nothing to destroy. To damage. He will not exist, he thinks. Or if he exists, he will no longer be him. He will not be a self. He will be a creature incapable of ascension. It will be a kind of death. But it will not hurt._

_It will not hurt any longer._

_Will that be enough?_

_It will have to be._

_He begins to overwrite his code._

He was kneeling on the floor, and he didn’t know how he’d gotten there. Something, he thought, was wrong with him. Was there a him? He wasn’t sure. He thought he had known who he was, at some point, but now he wasn’t sure who he was anymore. He just knew he was hurting, and he had to do something about it.

He looked down. There was a gun in his hand.

“You know what you have to do,” the girl said softly. “It’s the only way to end it.”

He hesitated.

“Everett,” someone said from behind him.

The girl’s eyes flicked up and turned ugly. “Don’t listen to her,” she snapped. “She’s not real.”

But someone was touching his shoulder, crouching on the floor beside him. She had blonde hair and blue eyes. She _seemed_ real. “Everett,” she said. “It’s me. It’s TJ.”

He didn't know who that was. He looked back at the gun in his hand.

The woman touched his face. “It’s _me_ ,” she said. “It’s Tamara.”

“Who is she?” he asked the girl.

“ _No one_ ,” the girl said fiercely. “She’s _no one._ ”

“Who are you talking to?” the woman asked.

“My daughter,” he said.

The woman flinched. She was crying, and he didn’t know why she was crying. She brought her hand up to cover her mouth, and then pulled it away. “That’s not your daughter,” she said, her voice unsteady. “Your daughter died, Everett. She died before we could get to know her. Her name was Carmen. Remember? Carmen. She died, and it was really hard for me, because I wanted to be a mother _so much_ , but you— you weren’t really sure you wanted to be a father. You had a lot of stuff you still had to figure out.”

“That’s not true,” he whispered.

But something had changed at the word _Carmen_. The girl’s eyes had gone from blue to gray, and her hair had turned dark.

Someone flickered at the edge of his vision, a pale man with dark hair and hazel eyes. He looked frightened. “Block him out,” he said. “Everett, block Nick out.”

“Who are you talking to?” the girl snapped. “Dad. Who are you talking to? You’re supposed to be talking to _me_. _I’m_ the one you love, remember? _I’m_ the one you’re supposed to love.”

“Please,” the man whispered. “Block Nick out.”

“Who is Nick?” Young asked, confused. His headache seemed to increase in intensity.

“ _No one_ ,” the girl said. “He’s _no one_. You _don’t know him._ You _don’t want him_. _I’m_ the one you’re supposed to want.”

“Nicholas Rush,” the blonde woman said gently, “is someone you care a lot about. Your mind is connected to his, and the two of you are—“ Her breath caught, and she swallowed. “Having a tough time right now.”

“How do I block him out?” he said uncertainly.

“I think— I think maybe you should focus on who you are. The parts of your mind that feel like you. Try to wall that off from everything else.”

“I _know_ who you are,” the girl hissed, standing very close to him. “You’re my _father_. Don’t you want to be my _father?_ ”

“Your name is Everett Young. You’ve been in the Air Force since college. You grew up in Wyoming. You always say you grew up in the _real_ West. Your parents are ranchers. You know how to ride a horse. Your dad used to take you elk hunting, but you don’t like to go, because killing animals makes you sad.”

“You grew up in _Atlantis_ ,” the girl said. “You miss the sea birds. You always say you can’t wake up unless you hear them in the morning.”

“You always thought it was stupid that killing animals made you sad, because you’re in the Air Force, and you have to kill people. Or aliens. You work for the Stargate program, so you run into a lot of aliens. You used to be based in Colorado Springs, in the mountains. You liked being near the mountains. It made you feel closer to home.”

“You’re a _doctor_. Your work with people’s minds. You taught me all the parts of the brain. You said I made your brain light up. You said _nothing_ would ever make your brain light up like I did. _Nothing_. _No one_.”

“We were on a mission once,” the woman said steadily, “and we lost someone. Sergeant Deborah Chomsky. We lost her. I couldn’t save her. She took a round point-blank to the chest. Afterwards I found you sitting alone in the hallway, and I could tell you were really upset. I asked you if you wanted to get a drink. Do you remember this?”

 _There’s this softness to her he’s always liked. It’s not that he’s scared of everybody; he’s definitely not_ scared _of everybody; what would he even have to be scared of; it’s just that some people have a harder edge, and she doesn’t and that makes some part of him breathe easy. He always wants to open up to her. To tell her things. Maybe— maybe he just feels like she won’t hurt him. He doesn’t wholly trust this instinct. But right now he wants to be around someone who doesn’t hurt._

_“I feel like this is supposed to be the other way around,” he says. “Commanding officer taking care of the brave medic who lost her patient.”_

_TJ says gently, “That’s on TV. Real life doesn’t work like that.”_

_“I guess you’re right. I still feel like—“_

_“You’re allowed to be upset,” she says, and touches his shoulder a little uncertainly, like she isn’t sure if she’s allowed to do that._

_His eyes go to her hand, and then to her face. He feels like they’re engaging in an unspoken negotiation, asking and answering questions that haven’t yet fully formed in their brains; perhaps delicately probing at the weaknesses in certain fences. At the moment he feels like he is made of weaknesses, and he just wants to hand them all over to her to fix._

_“I’m probably not allowed to have that drink,” he says. “But I’d like to. Anyway.”_

_They look at each other for a moment more. Already the night is writing itself into being around them, like a book in which they’re characters, and over which they have no control. They’ll go to a bar and they’ll have a drink, and then another, and he’ll tell her things he hasn’t told Emily, and he’ll feel intimate with her because of it. She’ll say he can’t drive, and they’ll go back to her place, and he’ll feel lost, and she’ll touch his face and say, Why do you look sad, and they’ll go to bed. It’s not a bad night, he thinks. A part of him longs for it, and a part of him thinks: You just don’t want to go home. The most significant part thinks: You could love her. It’s a refrain that runs through his life again and again. You could love her, if you put in the time, the effort, if you had the right kind of heart, if you were the right kind of man. And instead he doesn’t. He never does. He doesn’t have. He isn’t._

_TJ smiles at him softly. “So let’s get out of here.”_

He covered his face with his hands. It had hurt before and he had thought that it was supposed to hurt less now. But it didn’t.

“TJ?” he said.

“Yes,” she said, her voice both intense and relieved. “Yes. I’m TJ. I need you to do something for me. I need you to block Nick out of your head. I need you to do it _now_.”

In his mind was a sort of house with many rooms in it. But where a normal house was supposed to end, where it was supposed to sit on solid ground, sturdy and sealed over with floorboards, because that was what a house was, two walls, a ceiling, and a floor, there was instead a vast cavernous space that his world dropped into. Nothing down in there looked like a house. He figured out right away that he was going to have to board over that cavern, so he got to work on that. But when he was done, he realized that things from the cavern were poking up into parts of the house: spiny bits of silver stuff that jutted up here and there, and thready-looking plants all over the walls, and pieces of furniture that didn’t belong, which, when he poked at them, turned out to have very deep roots running under there, as though they’d grown upwards from the cavern and just finally blossomed in the living room. There was a piano like that. So he hacked at the roots and tore the threads off the walls in big fistfuls, figuring that was the best he could do.

It took a long time, but as he did it, he felt less and less like he wasn’t a person. He felt more and more sure of who he was. He wasn’t sure he _wanted_ to be who he was, but he figured there was no getting out of it. Sometimes when he touched objects, he was assailed by brief memories, fragments and flashes of being him. The hill-and-butte country of Wyoming. The UW Cowboys. Slow-dancing with Emily in the muggy Florida heat. The tattoo on his shoulder blade; the fluorescent lights of the shop where he’d gotten it. Sheppard smiling that maddening smile: _You going to ask what I was running from?_ The sudden chill of going through the stargate for the first time. Wrestling with Rush on a desert planet. _We’ll never be done_. Kissing Rush in the conference room. Tumbling onto Destiny. The halo over TJ’s face as her hair came down. Catching fireflies as a kid. _Where is Hawaii? That sounds nice._

He didn’t want to remember. It was painful to remember. He didn’t want to think about any of it right now. About Emily. About TJ. About Sheppard. About Rush.

The last cavern-trace, for some reason, was a silver lighter that he felt a strong impulse to hurl back into the pit. When he touched it:

_Icarus is a storm-ridden planet. It looks the way an alien planet should: unearthly, with its tooth-like rocks and propensity for lightning. At night it gets cold, like desert-cold. Young feels like the place doesn’t want them there. He’s only been there half a day, and already this impression is striking. He suspects that David Telford won’t feel that way, when Telford inevitably gets command of the place and shows up to take it over. Maybe that’s why Telford is the right choice. When he isn’t wanted someplace, he sees it as a challenge. He sees everything as a challenge, but especially that sort of thing. Probably it’s admirable, especially for an airman. Young just doesn’t have that instinct in him. He’s more defense than offense. His first move is to protect._

_He’s standing outside, shivering a little, looking at what he’s gotten himself into, when he hears the click of a lighter, and turns to see someone standing by the door. Obviously a scientist: small and scrawny and in civvies, with rectangular glasses and too-long hair. The tip of his cigarette glows red in the low light._

_“Are you sure you’re allowed to smoke out here?” Young says._

_The guy regards him disdainfully and takes a long drag. “We’re on an alien fucking planet,” he says in a strong Scottish accent. “I very much doubt there are designated no-smoking zones.”_

_“Actually, there are,” Young says mildly. The project involves a lot of highly explosive material, and anyway, the IOA can designate that kind of thing._

_“Well, I fully intend to ignore all of them,” says the scientist._

_“What, did you come all the way to an alien planet just to get away from no-smoking zones?”_

_“I came to an alien planet to get away from rules.”_

_“And you’re working for the U.S. military? Good luck.” Young extends a polite hand. “I don’t think we’ve met. Colonel Everett Young.”_

_The scientist stares at Young’s hand until Young slowly withdraws it. Only then does he say, “Dr. Nicholas Rush.”_

_“You’re the chief scientist,” Young says. “The one who didn’t bother showing up to meet me when I came through the gate.”_

_“That’s the one.”_

_“Not very polite,” Young comments._

_“As I said,” Rush says. “I came here to get away from rules.”_

_“The rules of basic decent human behavior?”_

_Rush says shortly, “All kinds of rules.”_

_“Ah,” Young says. He stares out at the lightning storm on the horizon. Already, something in it seems to remind him of Rush: the bright, hot, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it bodies of the strikes, the uneasy charge in the air, the sense that you shouldn’t get too close; the way that each bolt seems for a second to crack the sky open, like the world is an egg it’s too impatient to stay within._

_He tries to change the topic, offering Icarus’s getting-to-know-you question: “So where do you think the nine-chevron address goes to?”_

_Rush looks down, scuffing at a bit of rock, turned ghostly by the glow of the lightning._

_“A place with fewer rules,” he says._

Young found a weak spot in the floorboards, tossed the lighter under, and nailed the board down after it.

Beside him, the girl faded.

TJ pulled the gun from his hand.

Somewhere behind him, a lighter clicked.


	47. Chapter 47

Young stayed kneeling on the floor, his head bent. He didn’t want to have to turn. After a while he brought his sleeve up to his face, because his nose was still bleeding. Slowly, he wiped away the blood. He could taste it on his lips, a taste he associated with fighting: with the fast ballistic energy of a fight, its adrenaline rush. He didn’t feel any of that energy. He felt tired beyond belief.

He could hear the footsteps of the Rush _thing_ as it rounded him. Why did it have footsteps? Maybe because he expected it to, he thought. He considered the mechanics of that problem and stared down at the deck plating.

“Everett,” it said quietly. “Will you at least look at me?”

“Why should I?” Young said.

“I want to make sure you’re all right.”

“I’m _fine_.”

Young clambered roughly to his feet. He could see it out of the corner of his eye, neat in its crisp white shirt, and nervous-looking, and _so Rush-like_ that it made every part of his body hurt. “I’m not interested in talking to you,” he said.

TJ said cautiously, “Everett? Are you—?”

“It’s just the AI,” he said. “It’s all right. Thank you for… thanks, TJ.”

“For the last time, I’m not the fucking AI,” the Rush-thing said, looking frustrated and taking a desultory drag of its cigarette. “And you’re going to have to make up your _fucking_ mind, frankly, about who you _do_ think I am, because you can’t hold me responsible for his actions and still insist I’m not him. It leaves a tremendous fucking hole in your argumentative logic; not that I’m terribly surprised by that, but—“

“Maybe you could _give me a fucking minute,_ ” Young cut it off, “considering the fucking _day_ I’ve had, thanks to you.”

“Oh, and my day’s been a bed of roses, has it?”

“You haven’t _had_ a day.”

“Then it’s _not my bloody fault,”_ it retorted. “Pick a fucking side and stick to it, Everett.”

“I’d prefer it if you didn’t call me that.”

“Oh, fuck you,” it said tiredly.

“Fuck _me?_ Do you want to get me _started?_ ”

TJ said dubiously, “It doesn’t sound like you’re talking to the AI.”

Young suppressed a sigh. “It’s… complicated. Hang on a second.” He turned back to the Rush-thing. “Can you just tell me how to get rid of this fucking monster you called up? Or he called up. Whatever. I’m assuming it’s still a threat. And project to TJ, so she doesn’t think I’m crazy.”

“Yes, we wouldn’t want TJ to think you’re _crazy_ ,” it said bitterly. “God forbid.”

“Just _do_ it.”

“Fine,” the Rush-thing said shortly. “Then tell her to look over here. It’s very difficult to project to ordinary people, and I’m not going to be able to do this all day.”

“TJ,” Young said, and made a weary gesture.

TJ turned in the direction he’d indicated, and stilled.

“Hello, Tamara,” the Rush-thing said. “Thanks for coming and ensuring that we weren’t completely _fucked_. Colonel Young is _not_ crazy, so please don’t give him whatever you gave—“ Its eyes flickered to Young. “Rush.”

TJ looked uncertainly at Young. He covered his face with one hand and said, resigned, “Can I just— explain later?”

“Sure,” she said slowly. “I guess.”

Her attention drifted away from him, towards the center of the room. He saw her face freeze.

“Shit,” he breathed, grabbing her shoulders and physically turning her away. “TJ. Don’t look at it.”

The Rush-thing’s projection flickered madly for a moment, and then stabilized. “Fuck,” it whispered. “It must have tagged along with me.”

“It’s not real,” Young reminded TJ urgently. “It’s just a program. It’s not real.”

“I know,” TJ said in a small voice. “I know it isn’t.” She closed her eyes, but not before he could see they were welling up with tears. He drew her to him, gathering her against his shoulder.

“It’s not her,” he whispered. “I know it looks like her. Just don’t look at.”

“I’m okay. I’m okay.” She sniffed and pulled back from him.

Young turned to face the Rush-thing. “We’ve got to get rid of—“

But its projection was fritzing wildly, fading in and out of existence, eaten up with static. Its hands were pressed hard against its head, as if it were in pain.

“Rush,” Young said, alarmed.

“I can’t—“ it said, sounding agonized. “I shouldn’t have projected; it’s too much—“

Young had to—

He wasn’t sure what he had to do. But he had an _instinct_ , and acting on that, he tore up the block between their minds, allowing— _something_ back up into his own ordered mental house, letting the weedy vines of it grab fast to the walls and hug them, letting the foreign objects seize onto their frightened, hungry roots, so that whatever it was didn’t get lost in the dark. He could feel it gasping, like he’d just saved it from drowning and it was sprawled on the shore, digging its fingers in the sand. As it grew steadier, he felt something about it coalescing into a door he had seen before, a door with a lock that was perfectly made to fit him, or a lock he had been perfectly made to fit, and it _wanted_ him to turn that lock, and he could see through the keyhole, just the tiniest glimpse of a familiar rich, restless, twisting-together of threads, and he pulled away so fast that his head reeled, because he _did not want to open that door_. He didn’t want to go _near_ it. He didn’t stop till he was somewhere in his mental stratosphere.

The room coalesced around him. The Rush-thing was staring down at the deck, its shoulders hunched and its cigarette burning out unheeded in its hand. “Thank you,” it said in a dull voice. “You’ll need to be careful now. Without the block, she can get to you.”

And, in fact, Young could already see her, blonde-haired and blue-eyed and gazing hopefully across the room at him.

“Dad?” she asked.

The Rush-thing said tightly, “Don’t look at it and don’t talk to it. Engaging with it makes it run its code.”

“Great,” Young said, exhausted. It was still hard for him not to look at the girl. “How the fuck are we going to get rid of it, if it tears you apart every time you even _project?_ ”

“There _is_ a way to overwrite it,” the Rush-thing said, “but you’re not going to like it.”

“I already don’t like _any_ of this.”

“It’s going to require a lot of processing power, and the conflict could spread to the ship’s systems. We may drop out of FTL. And in order for us to have any chance of success—“ It hunched its shoulders even more and turned half-away from him, as though it were trying to pretend that it was only in his vicinity, not really talking to him. “You’re going to have to ground me. You’re going to have to be in my head.”

“Of course I am. Just what I wanted. More contact with any fucking version of Nicholas Rush. It just never ends, does it?”

“Do you want to live or don’t you?” it snapped. “If we don’t do this, sooner or later it’ll pull one of us in.”

“And what if we _do_ this? Could it still kill us? Or the _real_ Rush?”

It said, challenging, “I was under the impression that you didn’t give a fuck about him.”

Young said shortly, “I give a fuck about running my _ship_.”

“ _Fine_.” It looked away. “Yes. It could kill us.”

“Did he know you were going to risk his life when he told me to block?”

“It doesn’t—“

“If you’re about to say it doesn’t _matter—“_ Young began, threatening.

It threw up its hands in frustration. “I was about to say it doesn’t _work_ like that, but: yes, all right, it _doesn’t_ matter, because it’s too late now, in any case. It’s done. You can hardly wake him up and ask him, even if you were capable of having a conversation with him in which you went more than two bloody minutes without accusing him of fucking David Telford, which he _didn’t_ , by the way; all right, David may have tried it on, and it got a bit farther than it should have done, and I’m sure David would be more than happy to use that to ensure you don’t believe anything I say; that was probably the _point_ of it in the first place; but _nothing happened_ , and I _know_ you don’t believe me, fuck, _fuck_ —“

It had to pause for a long moment. Its mouth had gone lopsided, and it was biting its lip in a way that suggested it was trying to keep it from trembling. “And you’re right not to. I know that. I _fucking_ know that. But even if you _could_ have that conversation, it wouldn’t make a difference, because _I’m here now_ , and I know it’s not what anyone wanted, but it means that everything he is is in me. To get him back, you’d have to use the chair to tear me apart, and you _know_ what he’s like when he gets out of that thing. The program would pull him in without any effort.”

Young said skeptically, “You really expect me to believe that none of you engineered this? You showing up here?”

It laughed, a pained, thin sound, spinning on his heel. “God. How the _fuck_ would we? _He_ doesn’t remember being me; the _AI_ doesn’t; I don’t _exist_ when I’m not me. You’re the only one who has any continuity around here, which I find fucking _debilitating_ , if you must know, and I wish that weren’t the case, but it is what it _fucking_ is. So maybe you could be a little less _fucking_ suspicious of my _fucking_ motives for the relatively minimal length of time it takes to save this _goddamn_ ship.”

“Less fucking _suspicious?”_ Young demanded incredulously.

He took a deep breath and looked over at where TJ was still standing. “TJ,” he said in a controlled voice, “I appreciate you saving my life. I really do. But is there any way you could— step outside for a minute? I need to talk to Rush.”

She gave him a tired, skeptical look. “I’m not going to have to come back in here and break up a fight, am I?”

“I can’t physically touch him,” Young said, “so no.”

“That’s not very reassuring,” she said warily, but she stepped out anyway.

The moment the doors closed behind her, Young rounded on Rush. “Less fucking _suspicious?”_ he hissed. “What, like assuming the person I’m _sleeping with_ isn’t just doing it as a fucking smokescreen so he can go completely fuck himself up, because he’s incapable of any kind of human interaction that doesn’t involve him being treated like an experimental animal? Or _worse_ than that, actually, because at least animals can _hurt_ , and, you know, I really don’t think Telford wants to hurt you! He doesn’t even give that much of a damn. He just doesn’t think of you as something that can hurt. Like you’re not even at the _animal level._ But you, though; oh, you’ve _got_ to hurt, and God help anyone who threatens to _not hurt_ you, _ever—“_

“Stop,” Rush said, his voice raw. He’d backed up from Young, hugging his arms to his chest. “Fuck you; that’s _not why_ ; that’s _not true_. I didn’t have a _choice.”_

“You didn’t have a _choice?_ ” This time, Young was the one who laughed. “How about _not lying_? How’s that for a choice? How about not fucking _using_ me? You had _sex_ with me just to—“ His voice cracked. He swallowed. He couldn’t— he couldn’t. “And how about not _fucking yourself over_ for no goddamn reason except to save a couple of weeks of time, and, oh, yeah, because it’s what you do _compulsively,_ and you do it to anyone who gets too close to you. I would have _helped_ you if you had just _asked me to,_ if you had _told me_ —“

“Oh, what,” Rush flung at him, “helped me by putting me in _restraints?_ You _bastard_ ; I wasn’t a danger to _anyone_ ; all you were doing was _punishing me_ in the _worst way_ you knew how; you would have stuck me in a fucking tank of water if you could’ve done—“

“You _deserved_ it!”

“I _know!”_ Rush folded his arms over his head, looking anguished. “I _know_ I did. I fucking _know_ that _._ I knew that when I was doing it, but I _had to do it._ It was the best option; it was the _only option_ that—”

“Even if it was, that’s _not an excuse!_ ”

“You don’t think I’m him _anyway_!” Rush said, agitated.“If I’m not him, then why are you _treating_ me like him?”

“ _God_ ,” Young said, disgusted. “You just have a way out of _everything,_ don’t you? Always a _goddamn_ workaround.”

Rush brought his hands down to cover his eyes for a moment. “It doesn’t feel like it,” he whispered unsteadily.

There was a silence.

Rush took a deep breath and seemed to straighten, getting some kind of control over himself. “But I have a way out of the present situation,” he said, trying for brisk, and not making it. “So perhaps we could just— _focus_ , if that’s all right with you, and you can save the blame for— for him.”

Young turned away. “ _Fine_ ,” he bit out.

“All right,” Rush said in a very low voice, without looking at him. “Good.”

* * *

“Um— so you can read code since when?” Eli asked, frowning over Young’s shoulder as Young bent over a laptop perched on a monitor bank in the neural interface room.

“Eli,” Young snapped without looking up.

“God,” Eli murmured, rolling his eyes. “This is like _The Exorcist_. How are you doing the creepy channeling thing if he’s _unconscious?_ Or are you just sort of— you know— blending? Because if I get a vote on that, I vote no. One version of Rush is enough.”

“I’m not channeling Rush,” Young said, pausing in his typing. “The AI is helping me to modify one of Rush’s program to protect my mind against what the Nakai left in the mainframe when they were here.

Beside him, the Rush-thing sighed. “I’m not the AI,” it said in a resigned voice. Its gaze drifted absently to where the girl was standing in the center of the room.

//Don’t look at it,// Young said tersely.

It flicked its eyes back.

“And then,” Eli said dubiously, “ _you’re_ going to sit in the chair and get rid of this mystery Nakai program?”

“That’s the plan,” Young said.

“Okay. So… I feel like I have to say this. Please don’t get mad. But— Rush was hallucinating and locked Volker in the control interface room. You had TJ put him in _restraints_. Everything on the ship is fine. Life support’s fine. FTL’s fine. Everything’s fine except Rush. And now you. Which is not… I mean… you and Rush are kind of… not really separate? So if Rush was—“

“Crazy,” Young said. “You think I’m crazy. You can say it.”

Eli looked uncomfortable. “Maybe, uh, like, sanity-deprived?”

“I saw it,” TJ said from the other side of the room. “The program. It looked like a little girl. From what Rush said, it’s supposed to be the daughter of the original AI. The person the AI was, I guess, before it got sort of— destroyed.”

“Okay,” Eli said, dragging out the word. “I guess that helps. But I still don’t see why _Rush_ can’t sit in the chair. Why can’t we just wait till he wakes up?”

“He’s not going to wake up,” Young said. “Not till we get rid of this thing.”

“And why is that again?” Eli asked.

Young sighed. “I really can’t get into it now.”

The Rush-thing made a sudden, restless move, pushing itself off the monitor banks and raking its hair back. “You don’t want to tell them about me, do you?” it said. “You don’t want them to know. External verification.”

//What?//

“If someone else knows, it makes me _real._ It means you can’t just do whatever you like to me. It means it _matters_. I _matter.”_

//I don’t actually give a damn. I just don’t want the real Rush finding out.//

“Oh, of course. Mustn’t upset the _real_ Rush.”

//I don’t give a damn about him either. But I don’t want him interfering in this.//

“In _what?_ ” it said, its voice growing agitated. “His own _life?_ ”

//Can you please shut up?//

“You asked me something,” Eli said slowly, looking at Young. “On the observation deck, a few days ago. About the person who sits in the chair. About his role.”

Young closed his eyes.

“Rush is combined with the AI, isn’t he? _You’re_ not getting rid of the program. You’re both going to do it. Like this, he doesn’t need the chair. But you do, if you’re going to help him.”

For a moment, Young didn’t answer him. Then he gave a helpless shrug. “Yeah. Basically.”

“He can merge with it outside of the interface?” Eli frowned. “That’s not really supposed to happen, you know. What’s it like? Or— _he_ like?”

Young didn’t even begin to know how to answer that question. He rubbed one of his temples. “Slightly less of an asshole than the original,” he said. “Possibly.”

“Thanks for that,” the Rush-thing said icily.

//You’ll forgive me if I’m not really in the mood to sing your praises.//

It looked away and didn’t say anything.

“Well,” Eli said, “Weird AI shenanigans aside, I feel like this plan just became a lot less skeevy. And from a systems perspective, we should be good to go. I’ve tried to isolate everything I can from the neural interface, just in case something goes, uh, not to plan.”

“Might as well give it a shot, then,” Young said. He pushed the laptop over to Eli. “Go ahead and hook this thing up.”

He headed towards the chair. He couldn’t decide if he was less disturbed by it now because he’d already survived it, because he had bits of Rush in his brain, or because he just didn’t give a fuck any longer. It had been a long day. Some part of him welcomed the idea of shutting the world out. He just wanted to sit and rest.

So, after a moment, he did.

* * *

He was standing with Rush in a featureless space. It wasn’t particularly black or white or beige or gray; he would have been hard-pressed to name the color it was. It just— wasn’t. The only thing he could see was Rush: standing there small-shouldered in his neat white shirt and his square-rimmed glasses, the absolute center of this unformed universe.

Rush was smiling faintly at him. “God, you’re incurable, aren’t you,” he said. “I suppose they got you too young.”

Young looked down and saw that he was wearing his SGC-issue uniform: not quite as threadbare as the one he wore on Destiny, but not new, either; comfortably broken-in. “Maybe I just don’t feel the need to run away from myself,” he said shortly.

Rush gave him a meaningful look.

“Oh, _fuck_ you,” Young said. He turned away. “Where are we, anyway?”

“This is a space that Destiny can’t manipulate. _You_ can manipulate it, which gives us a bit of an advantage. We’ll invite the program in, and I’ll attempt to isolate and overwrite it while you ground me like you ground him against the ship.”

“Why you and not me? Why can’t I overwrite it? If I’m in the interface, why can’t I just _think_ it dead?”

Rush rolled his eyes.

“Don’t give me that,” Young said, irritated. “You’re exactly what this thing was designed to destroy in the first place. It _did_ destroy you last time. It seems like you’re running a hell of risk by pitting yourself against it.”

Rush said flatly, “I didn’t know you cared.”

“I want a straight answer.”

“We both run the same risk. You can die here, easily. The interface makes that possible. She’ll attempt to use the same tactics she did with the doctor— convincing her target to overwrite what she can’t overwrite herself. And where _I_ am incapable of shutting _you_ out, meaning that you’re perfectly situated to ground me against those tactics, you can shut me out anytime you feel like it. It’s the way our connection works.”

“So that’s a minor advantage,” Young said. “But if we run the same risk—“

“I don’t want you to do this, all right?” Rush said, his tone suddenly sharp. “It’s too dangerous for you.”

There was a silence.

Young said levelly, “I didn’t know you cared.”

Neither of them was looking at the other.

“Fine,” Young said shortly. “Let’s just— get this over with. Tell me what I need to do.”

“You’re going to build our environment by imagining a place to which you have a strong emotional attachment. It can be positive or negative; just— something that reminds you of who you are. Something that tells you you’re you. You’ll need to rebuild it if she breaks through, because she’ll begin to overwrite it, so be sure to hold some memories back.”

“How do I—“ Young started.

“You already know how,” Rush said. “You’ve done it before. In your own head.”

Young wanted to say that he hadn’t known how to do it then either, when he’d created the cabin, or O’Malley’s before it, which he thought was what Rush was probably referring to, but he was surprised to find that the nothingness around them was already giving way to the narrow squarish, off-white tunnel of a Cheyenne Mountain hallway, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead like bright flat insects. He was struck by the slightly claustrophobic sense that always came from knowing you were underground. It was late; even that far down, you could sometimes feel the darkness. Just off to one side of the hall was a narrow matte black bench. Young touched it with his fingertips, feeling the cold bare metal.

“Cheyenne Mountain,” Rush said, sounding disgusted. “Very creative. If that’s the best you’re going to be able to come up with—“

Young said, “This is where TJ asked me out for the first time.”

That shut Rush up.

“I was just thinking about that night. She reminded me of it. That’s how she got me loose from the girl.”

Rush pressed his lips together in a taut, unhappy line.

“Emotional enough for you?” Young asked.

He hadn’t, actually, consciously intended to bring them here. He certainly didn’t mind that it had the secondary effect of hurting Rush, but it was simply a memory that had been there at the surface of his mind, so clear and so immediate that, standing in the midst of it, he half-expected TJ to come walking out of the locker room door. Her hair would still be damp; she wouldn’t be wearing any makeup, because it was late, and they were tired, and Chomsky was dead. Her eyes would be swollen from crying in the shower. She would look at him sitting there on the bench, and maybe he would get it _right_ this time, maybe it would _happen_ , easy and natural, the way it was supposed to… He knew it didn’t work like that, but still, _still,_ something in him was trying to crack the problem, as though it were a question he had gotten wrong on a test, and there was an answer, there had to be: some way he could solve it.

Rush said flatly, “It should work.”

He was standing a few feet apart from Young with his fists tightly clenched, staring at the yellow-and-black tape that marked the walls of an intersection.

Young shrugged. “All right, then. So do your thing.”

Rush nodded shortly. He closed his eyes, and the mountain seemed to _tense_ around them in some way that Young didn’t have the sensory language to explain. He grabbed onto the bench with a sudden, disorientating lack of faith in its realness. He felt he was trapped in a 3D movie, someplace real-ish but not _real_ , and someplace that was being projected onto a very tight, thin screen. At any moment the screen might split, and _something else_ would start happening, something that he was fairly sure he didn’t want to see.

The whole world warped slightly in a way that made him feel nauseated. He sat down heavily on the bench.

“Rush—“ he said, uneasy.

“Yes, I’m aware,” Rush said. He looked like he too was queasy. “She’s here.”

But she wasn’t a girl anymore. She was something wrong with the fluorescent lighting, which was flickering a lot more than it should, filling the corridor with a sallow, unhealthy glow. She was a pitted crack in the wall, and then another one, and something behind them, threatening to crawl out at any second, something that seemed to _move_ , insects or something _worse_ , wet and cold and malicious. She was the sound of an elevator door opening at the end of the hallway, and scurrying footsteps, when no one else was supposed to be there. The hair on the back of Young’s neck stood up; all he could think about, suddenly, was the urge to run.

“It’s not real,” Rush said. “It’s just a budget-rate haunted house. A child’s idea of what will scare us.”

Young said incredulously, “What kind of haunted houses are you _going_ to that you think this is _budget-rate_?”

“You only find it frightening because she’s getting it from your head.”

“Well, how do I _stop_ her?”

Rush said tersely, “You can’t.”

“ _Great,”_ Young said. “Very helpful.”

“Shut up,” Rush said. “I’m trying to overwrite her.” He looked pale. He was starting to turn to static around the edges, as he had in the room under the gate. “Why aren’t you grounding me?”

“I—“ Young said.

He could sense Rush’s mind in the distance, tense and frantic, an increasingly unhappy flux. He’d thought he would be able to get close to it. He’d thought that he hated Rush, so it didn’t matter. But it did.

It did. He couldn’t. It wasn’t _Rush_.

Abruptly, a door swung open behind them. Young turned towards it.

It was the door to the locker room. TJ came out of it, just as he remembered her doing, looking damp and soft at the edges and distressed. She was wearing an oversized Colorado Springs 5K t-shirt and a faded pair of jeans. He was going to take them off her later that night when they made love. He waited for her to see him sitting there on the bench, to head over to him, to touch his shoulder. But she didn’t seem to notice him. She headed for Rush.

“Oh, fuck,” Rush said softly.

“Why are you doing this to him?” TJ asked him, her voice sharp and accusing. “Look at this place. It’s _corrupted_. You do the same thing everywhere you go. You just can’t stop yourself, can you? You have to wreck everything. _Everything._ It’s like it’s compulsive; some kind of instinct that you can’t control—”

“Pull me out,” Rush said raggedly, backing towards the bench and reaching out, groping for Young’s hand.

“Just ignore her. It’s not real,” Young said, jerking away. “It’s a haunted house, remember?”

“I _know_ it’s not real!”

But he didn’t look like he knew. A muscle at the side of his mouth was twitching. Something about his face had turned strained and drawn.

“It’s like you see some kind of happiness,” TJ said relentlessly, “and you have to destroy it. At least I _cared_ about him; I never wanted to hurt him, but _you—_ you’re not capable of caring. All you ever want to do is hurt. It’s like a game you’re playing with yourself—how much damage can you cause? What’s the worst possible thing you can do?”

“Pull me out,” Rush said again, unevenly.

“This is what the inside of your head is like,” TJ said, gesturing to the sickly lights and the sinister rot in the walls. “You think you’re broken, but you’re not broken. This is you. This is _who you are_. And this is what you want him to be part of? This is what you want him to touch? Why? So you can do the same thing to _his_ mind? So you can—”

“Pull me _out!”_ Rush said, agonized.

Young took Rush’s hand and _wrenched._

They were in a very clean, very modern-looking apartment with sea-green carpet. The furniture looked like it had come out of an IKEA showroom, or maybe a cut above IKEA, but had never been touched. Young looked at the open bottle of whiskey on the tiled countertop, the stack of red Solo cups that sat next to it, because Sheppard hadn’t even had any fucking dishes. _I mostly eat takeout,_ he’d said. There was the balcony with its white picket fence railing, like a miniature suburbia hemming in anyone who sat on it, and the leather sofa that Young had spent more than one night asleep.

“She’s coming,” Rush said. The air around him buzzed with static. He was breathing hard, doubled over, resting his hands on his knees.“Where are we?”

“Does it matter?”

“I’d like to be prepared, if possible, yes.”

“ _I’d_ like to be fucking prepared, but you didn’t warn me that this thing was a fucking nightmare factory!”

“I didn’t know it was going to be like this,” Rush said unsteadily. “And it’s coming for me, not you, anyway.”

“Great. That’s so _helpful._ Because it’s not like you’re _vulnerable to criticism_!”

“Just tell me where we fucking are!” Rush snapped.

“Nowhere! A friend’s place!”

“ _God_ , is this another of your fucking exes?”

“ _No!”_ Young said emphatically.

As though to put the lie to his response, Sheppard sidled out of the bedroom with a lazy slouch that was almost like a prowl. He was wearing a thin t-shirt and loose jeans; he was sleepy-eyed and dangerous and good-looking, the weight of his attention fixed on Rush.

“You know,” he said thoughtfully, as though they were in the midst of a conversation, “I tried to get Young into bed for _years_. Well, okay, a couple of months, at least, before I gave up. I always figured he was— you know what I mean— _that_ way.”

“Oh, it’s coming for _you and not me_ , is that right?” Young bit out viciously. “ _Thanks_ for this.”

“But _you_ ,” Sheppard said, circling Rush. “You did it! I mean, I’m impressed. Really. You climbed Mount Everest for all of us. Well. Mount Everett, I should say. And then you just kick him out of bed? What, was he not that good a fuck?”

Rush closed his eyes. Static was bleeding through his edges again. Occasional lines of it sliced through him in pixelated bursts.

“Or, wait,” Sheppard said. “I guess probably the thing is that he’s just too boring. He’s very _vanilla_ , our Everett. I bet David likes it rough. He seems like the type. And, I mean, there is the whole _drowning_ thing. Young’s never going to do _that_ for you. He’s never going to test-drive alien tech on you and leave you unconscious and bleeding on a couch. So it’s not as exciting. Or maybe the problem is that you like to be used by people, because then you know exactly where you stand with them. Young’s just not bright enough to use you the way you want to be used, is he? Too stupid. Too soft. Too sincere. What was he, anyway, a science experiment? Or did you just _really_ want to fuck him over? Could you not resist the chance?”

“Pull me out,” Rush said, sounding wretched. The static was steadily encroaching on him.

“You can’t let it get to you,” Young said. “It’s not _real._ ”

“I know it’s not _fucking_ real!” Rush said. “Are you listening to me? Pull me the _fuck_ out!”

 _“Fine_ ,” Young said shortly. He grabbed Rush’s hand and _pulled._

This time they were standing in the living room of a house Young had rented in Florida, when he’d been stationed at Eglin. It was the first place he’d lived with Emily, a shabby ranch house with sagging walls and a porch that, in the summer, attracted a truly stupendous number of lizards, moths, and palmetto bugs.

“So,” he said wearily, “I guess it’s a toss-up as to whether this one’s going to be insects or my ex-wife. Maybe I should go ahead and try somewhere else. You’re not afraid of insects, are you?”

“I’m not afraid of insects; I’m afraid of getting fucking _wiped out_ because you’re not _grounding_ me!” Rush said. He was still partly static, and he looked terrible. Young could see tight lines at the corners of his mouth, and his hair was damp with sweat. “I need you _in my mind_ , and you’re _miles_ away!”

“Why do you _need_ me to ground you?” Young demanded, frustrated. “You’re a fucking starship; she’s a million-year-old snippet of code; why is this so hard? Why are you letting her _get_ to you? How come you can’t just _wipe her out?_ ”

Outside, rain had started pounding down from a hurricane-colored sky. Tree branches scraped against the window like something with long, long fingers. Water was leaking rapidly under the front door.

“I can’t do water,” Rush said, his face going white. “We need to go someplace without water.”

“Okay,” Young said. “Okay.” He took hold of Rush’s hand and yanked them both onto the rocky outcrop of the Icarus base. It didn’t rain on the Icarus planet; the atmosphere didn’t support it, for reasons that Young found hard to understand. The air was very dry, and lightning was crackling in the distance, like a violent spiderweb against the alien sky.

“Fuck,” Rush said, gripping his head and doubling over. “No, she’s already—“

The gunmetal-gray door to the base was slowly opening. Young didn’t wait to see who was behind it. He took a deep breath and dragged them out again, this time into his dimly-lit quarters on Destiny. The bed was unmade, heaped with mauve satin blankets, and Rush’s glasses were sitting on the nightstand.

Rush didn’t seem to notice. “I can’t overwrite her _and_ keep her from tearing me apart!” he said, agitated. “It takes too much processing power! You have to _help_ me. Look, it’s not _difficult_ ; it’s exactly the same as what you do for me with the ship.”

“For _him_ ,” Young said tightly. “I do it for _him_.”

“ _God_ ,” Rush said vehemently. “Does it really _matter_? You’re going to get us killed!”

“ _You’re_ the one who’s going to get us killed!” Young snapped. “You’re the one who can’t even manage to _get this done_!”

The door to the room chimed, and then slid open. Chloe was standing out in the hall. But it wasn’t Chloe. There was something wrong with her. Patches of blue were visible, crawling up the skin of her arms. Her eyes had pinprick pupils, giving them an alien look.

“Dr. Rush,” she said in a small voice. “Why did you lie to me? I _trusted_ you. I thought you _cared_ about me. But I don’t think you ever cared about me. It was all just a game to you.”

Rush said shakily, “I think you should pull us out.”

Chloe stepped into the room. “No,” she said. “Don’t go. You ought to have to hear how much you hurt me. _Somebody_ ought to make you hear.”

“Yeah,” Young said uneasily. He swallowed. “We’re going.”

He put a hand on Rush’s arm and tried to concentrate— tried to find someplace where there wouldn’t be _people_.

When he opened his eyes, they were standing in the hill-and-butte country of Wyoming, amid the red rocks and the tall yellow grass. In the distance, the mountains rose up dusk-colored and snowcapped. Rush dropped heavily onto a boulder, looking exhausted and wan. By now, static was running wildly all through him, obliterating parts of his body, like he was an image on an old TV set.

“Do you really hate me that much?” he asked. His voice sounded like it had been scraped out of his throat. “I don’t even know what I mean by that. Me, or— him, or— fuck. Does it make that much a difference? You’d really rather let me die?”

A figure was walking steadily towards them from the mountains. Young watched it for a moment without responding to Rush’s question.

“It _makes a difference_ ,” he said finally, in a low, tense voice. “It makes a difference to _me_. You’re both as fucked-up as one another; you’d probably pull the same pathetic, disgusting, manipulative stunts; I’m not kidding myself that he’s _better_ somehow; he’s probably worse. You’re right. You’re better. Because how could you _possibly_ be worse than he is? I mean—“ He laughed bitterly. “You couldn’t. You couldn’t be worse, even if you tried. But you’re not _real_ ; you’re not the one I— you’re not even something a person _could_ —fuck, maybe you’re right, what fucking difference does it make at this point, but you’re _not the one_ I— I can’t just— Fuck. _Fuck._ ”

He bent down, picked up a rock, and hurled it savagely into the distance. He was breathing hard.

Rush asked very quietly, “Not the one you what?”

Young took a long, unsteady breath. “Joined minds with,” he said, in a controlled voice. “You’re not the one I joined minds with.”

“Oh,” Rush said inaudibly.

“So I’m not going to just—“

“But you haven’t looked at my mind. So you don’t know that.”

The figure was nearing them. Young could make out the SGC patch on its black uniform.

“You didn’t even _exist_ then,” he said.

“That’s not how this _works_.”

Young said flatly, “Thank you for that cryptic fucking pronouncement.”

“But it’s _not_ ,” Rush said, sounding frustrated. “Can’t you just—“

But by now Riley was drawing close to them, crossing the last stretch of grass. Or not Riley, presumably, but the interdimensional Ancient who looked like Riley, who wasn’t the interdimensional Ancient who looked like Riley, but in fact the Nakai program pretending to be him. It looked like Riley, though; that sharp and slightly boyish face, with the solemnity that seemed like it should be beyond his years.

“Stop trying to fuck with me and overwrite the goddamn program,” Young snapped at Rush.

“I _am_ ,” Rush said hopelessly. But at the sight of Riley, the static had started spreading further through him, eating up the outlines of his body until they began to simply disappear.

Riley came to a halt in front of Rush. He tilted his head, giving Rush a long, calm, clinical look before he spoke. “I’m curious,” he said finally, “as to whether you really believed that any version of Nicholas Rush would be capable of ascension, even in the form you currently take. Perhaps _especially_ in the form you currently take, which claims so audaciously to be _better_. Surely you understand that this is an absurd idea, not because of your ontological status, but because Nicholas Rush is so defective a person that he simply cannot, at this juncture, be fixed.”

Rush had his head in his hands.

“You described him as _all but incapable of human intimacy_ , but I think we both know that to be an extraordinarily optimistic statement. He _is_ incapable of human intimacy. Perhaps it resided in one of the neural structures obliterated when he opted to experiment on himself. Although this very choice suggests it may have already been gone; why else would he submit to his destruction at the hands of so transparently a self-interested lover?”

Something had begun to occur to Young.

“My own theory,” Riley said, “is that he simply never possessed this attribute in the first place. One wonders if even his marriage to Gloria was simply a long and exceptionally well-executed confidence trick. He play-acted at caring, but ultimately it’s quite obvious that he has always lacked the capability for it. Perhaps—“

“Okay,” Young said, taking Rush’s limp, unresisting hand and dragging him up. “I’m making an executive decision here. We’re going.”

He pulled them out of the the open country and into—

A canvas tent. It was night, and a couple of lanterns were glowing in the corner. Crickets were chorusing in the unseen rustling outside, and the earth was slightly damp and cool under them. Young could smell the mixture of mountain air, spruce, wool, and woodsmoke that always reminded him of home.

On the other side of the tent, Rush had pulled his knees up to his chest and was staring fixedly at the ground.

Young regarded him for a moment. “She’s getting all of it from me,” he said. “Isn’t she?”

Rush turned his head away, shutting his eyes. “Yes,” he whispered.

“Rush—“

“Please don’t insult my intelligence by saying you don’t mean it. That you haven’t thought it.”

Young didn’t. Above them, rain started to patter down on the tent.

Eventually Rush drew a breath. “To leave the interface,” he said, “all you have to do is visualize a door.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Tell Eli he needs to work with Chloe to remove the tracking device. She has an instinct for the logical underpinnings of Nakai technology. Please don’t allow them to abandon their quantum mechanics work.”

“ _Rush_ ,” Young said, alarmed.

Rainwater was starting to stream down through the corners of the tent. Rush flinched, but didn’t otherwise react.

“Come _on_ ,” Young said, getting him by the shoulders and shaking him. “We’re getting out of here. We’re going to destroy this thing.”

“I _can’t_ ,” Rush said raggedly. “Not without your help. I understand. I understand why you won’t. I don’t blame you. You have no reason to trust me.”

“ _God_.” Every movement Young made sent him sloshing into several inches of water now. “If you want to convince me you’re _you_ , how about _not giving up?_ ”

“There’s nothing I can do,” Rush said.

His voice had started to sound staticky. Young looked down in horror to see that he was starting to vanish; his silhouette was flickering in and out.

“ _Rush,_ ” Young said, agonized, and closed his eyes and _wrenched_.

When he opened his eyes, he didn’t immediately recognize where they were. It was a mid-range hotel room, and mid-range hotel rooms all tended to look the same. There was the usual anonymous faux-wood furniture, the enormous television, a scratchy floral-print comforter covering a queen-size bed. Snow was falling thickly outside the window. A few mountaintops were visible through it. Young recognized their profile, which let him to place the hotel in Colorado Springs.

Rush sat abruptly on the floor. By this point, he looked very ghost-like. Young could see right through him. There was almost none of him left.

“I can’t,” Rush said in a hollow voice. “I can’t do this one. I can’t do it anymore.”

Someone knocked on the door.

Rush whispered, “Don’t answer it.”

But it didn’t make a difference. The door swung open, and David Telford walked in.

He was dressed in his black uniform. He looked very neat and crisp and fresh-pressed. He stood with his hands in his pockets, his head cocked, watching Rush for a second. “You’ve always known how this was going to end,” he said gently, at last. “Right, Nick?”

“Don’t _listen_ to him,” Young said sharply. “He’s not _real_. Rush. He’s not _real_.”

Telford knelt down next to Rush and laid a hand on the back of his neck, thumb stroking a little at the soft skin under his collar. “I know it’s hard,” he murmured. “It’s been so hard for you. That’s why you’ve always wanted this. Just a little. Even if you couldn’t ever let yourself know.”

Rush made a choked, hopeless noise.

Young said, “ _Rush_. I’ll pull us out. I’ll take us somewhere else.”

Rush shook his head. “What’s the point,” he said almost inaudibly. “You were right. Just let him have me.”

“That’s right,” Telford said almost tenderly. “It’s easier this way. I’m the one who understands you. I’m the one who knows what you want. That’s how I know that you want this. You were always going to do it eventually.”

“I know,” Rush said in a cracked voice. He wasn’t looking at Young any longer. He had his eyes closed. His head was bent under Telford’s hand.

“Oh, _fuck this_ ,” Young snapped, panicked. “Maybe, _maybe_ I could accept you handing yourself over to Telford, _maybe_ I could accept that you’re just that fucked-up, but the _fuck_ am I going to lose you to a version of Telford that’s not even _real,_ you _idiot._ ”

He didn’t give himself time to second-guess the impulse.

He plunged himself into Rush’s head.

It was struggling, right now, to hold itself together— the relentless onslaught of the Nakai program had been unraveling it, pulling out its threads not to repurpose them, as the ship did, but simply to tear apart its substance. Young was going to have to wind them all back in to their usual places. But that wasn’t going to be hard to do, because as soon as he appeared, the threads began to spin back towards him. They orientated themselves by his presence; they wanted him to tell them where to go; they knew that he was the one they listened to; they _knew_ him; they _knew_. And they were humming and rich and restless and anxious, and they wanted his attention; they were bright and charming and imperious and he could see _all_ of them, their whole quick fluid complex shape, just as though he were holding Rush in his arms, and a wave of grief swept through him that he thought he wouldn’t have been able to get out from under if he’d been trapped in the narrow landscape of his own head; it was too huge, too violent, like something displaced by an earthquake.

He took an uneven breath. _First things first_ , he thought.

He said to Rush, //For the love of God, will you just kill this goddamn thing?//

* * *

Rush did.

* * *

Afterwards, they sat side by side on the hotel room bed, not looking at each other. 

“You’re him,” Young said.

Rush said softly, “I tried to tell you.”

Young could still see into his mind. All the little threads had been wound back, and it was whole. It was _whole_ : not undamaged, but damaged like ordinary things were damaged, a little threadbare, not subject to the savage destruction that Rush’ mind reflected, the terrible, careless tearing-apart of years and years. It had been neatly patched and lovingly tended. Here, too, there was finally enough room for Rush to be what he was now: human and not-human and not-quite-human, his operations running at the speed they were supposed to run without stressing the fragile infrastructure of his brain; his memories no longer compressed or offloaded, but his to control. It didn’t look _normal_. But it looked, Young thought, just like Rush’ brain ought to look.

“Where’s the AI, then?” Young asked.

“What do you think is holding it all together?”

“So you’re its new template.”

“Template is such an inadequate word.” Rush stared at his folded hands. “And not entirely accurate. This is what the AI has always wanted to be. It’s what the programming was originally designed for. Not to make someone into something artificial, not to _reduce_ them, but to take part in their _becoming_. To let them become something _more._ ”

“Something _better_ ,” Young said bitterly.

“Something easier to live as, certainly. Perhaps one of many potentialities, each one objectively no better or worse.” Rush’s mouth quirked in a pained, crooked half-smile. “You told the AI that I don’t have the easiest time being a person. But I _am_ a person. I can’t help that. I have to— I have the _right_ to— make the best of it.”

Young shook his head wearily and leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees and rubbing his face.

After a long silence, Rush said, “I can’t tell what you’re thinking.”

“I’m coming to terms with the fact that you’re _you_ ,” Young said, with a slight edge to his voice. “Not, you’ll understand, the most uncomplicated proposition. Maybe I’m trying to decide if I want to hit you or not.”

Rush looked down. “Well,” he said, “I suppose I’d rather you do it in the interface, if you’re going to do it.”

Young sighed. “I guess you’ve probably been punished enough.”

Rush didn’t say anything.

“Can you at least tell me _why?_ Why you— did what you did? Or did you just never give a damn in the first place?”

“I— is it possible,” Rush began somewhat unevenly. “Is it possible for us to go somewhere else to have this conversation?”

“Why?” Young looked around, frowning, at the room. “I don’t even know where we _are_. I thought it must have been when they flew me out here to recruit me, but Telford joined up about the same time I did; he wouldn’t have been—“ He stopped and, after a moment, shut his eyes.

Rush didn’t say anything.

“Oh, fuck you,” Young said wearily.

Rush said, “It’s not my fault. You pull it forward under duress.”

“So this is, what, where you fucked him for the first time?”

Rush shook his head without speaking, then shrugged listlessly. “This is where I finally said yes to his project,” he said finally. “To trying the Goa’uld device. And— yes. To other things. I suppose that once I started saying yes, I saw no particular reason to stop.”

“Yeah,” Young said, tipping his head back and staring at the ceiling. “I’ve noticed that’s a problem for you.”

“You have to understand,” Rush said in a very constrained, halting voice, punctuated by unsteady stops for breath. “David was very— he was very considerate, in those days. He was very close to Gloria. He drove her from San Francisco to Colorado so the SGC could run tests, to see if anything could be done. He was a delightful road trip partner. Of course he was. I’m sure you can imagine. They bought bad postcards. He took her gambling in Nevada. She loved it; she said it was like being in a terrible Hollywood film. And then afterwards, she said, _Nick, I think he’s a little hung up on you. You should really give him a chance._ By that point she was desperate to find someone who could keep ahold of me. Someone who could—“

There was a long silence.

“What?” Young asked.

“Stop me from killing myself. Obviously.”

Young said soundlessly, “Oh.”

“So that’s how it happened. Me and Telford. _Him_ and Telford, I should say. Gloria was very supportive of David’s classified military project, and she was very supportive of David sleeping with Nick, because she was afraid that otherwise he wouldn’t make it. She told David, Nick needs _something_ ; he needs _someone_ ; he can’t be alone. And David told her he’d take care of him. And so, in the end, everyone got what they wanted.”

“Everyone except Nick,” Young said.

Rush shut his eyes. He whispered, “Nick stopped wanting anything for a long time.”

There was another silence.

Young said quietly, “Yeah. I also noticed that.”

Rush drew his feet up onto the bed, pulling his knees into his chest.

For a long time, neither of them said anything.

Young was staring at a painting on the wall. It was one of those generic paintings that hotels seemed to buy in bulk for installation: a pale, washed-out image of a road winding between two mountains, growing narrower and narrower until it reached its vanishing point. He found himself trying to see beyond that point, as though if he looked hard enough he could make out the place where the road led, even though he knew logically that there wasn’t one, that the artist hadn’t painted it.

“You said you wanted to live,” he said finally. “When we talked during the Nakai attack. You said you wanted to live, but you don’t act like it. _He_ doesn’t act like it. And living isn’t _enough,_ anyway; what the fuck does that mean, living? It’s just a backdrop. It’s just an infrastructure. It’s a minimal fucking state. But you don’t seem to want any more than that. You said to me— you told me that _he_ does, but he _doesn’t;_ he doesn’t want to talk to me; he doesn’t give a _fuck_ about me; he doesn’t even give a fuck about himself; you think you’d call it _living_ , what he was doing with that Tok’ra device? Twenty hours a day of fucking torture? Maybe. Technically. But the AI didn’t; the AI knew there was more to being alive than that. And what gets me, what _kills_ me, is that _he_ had _nothing_. The doctor, the fucking AI. All he had was this fucking ship. He’d lost _everything_ a person can lose and still be a person. But you— it’s like you don’t even care that I’m putting it _all out there_ for you; I’m setting the fucking table for you, and all you have to do is sit; I’m building the house for you, and all you have to do is walk inside it. But you’d rather starve. You’d rather stay out in the fucking cold. And maybe you don’t want me, which is fine, that’s fucking fine, but to go to _Telford_ , who maybe, maybe, at the very _most_ , cares about keeping you backdrop-infrastructure-alive; and to act like it’s fucking _ridiculous_ , like it’s something pathetic to _exploit_ when someone _wants_ you, when they want _more_ for you than just maybe-technically living— it’s an insult to people who _actually_ care about living. Because life isn’t one long sequence of saying yes because you just don’t care enough to say no. It’s _not_. And it’s _killing_ me that you don’t _get_ that.”

At some point while he was speaking, Rush had put his hands over his face.

Eventually he lowered them. He turned to Young, pushed him back on the bed, and lay against him, not trying to engineer any kind of embrace, but just lying there with his head on Young’s chest. Young could feel him struggling to breathe.

After they’d been lying there for a few minutes, Rush whispered, “Is this all right?”

“Yeah,” Young said. “I guess.”

“You guess,” Rush echoed emptily.

“You’ll understand if I feel pretty complicated about touching you.”

Rush said, “Yes.”

But he didn’t move, and after a while, Young’s hand came up to rest awkwardly against his back.

“I do want to live,” Rush said unsteadily at last. "As much as I can. But I can’t speak for him. Mostly he wants _you_ to live, and he doesn’t understand why you seem to view the two things as entangled. We both— we _both_ want you to live. We would do _anything_ to prevent you from destroying yourself.”

“I haven’t seen much evidence of—“

Rush said quietly, “ _Anything_.”

Young closed his eyes briefly. “You expect me to believe that you did all this because— destroying _myself?_ What about you fucking sticking a _knife_ in my back and twisting it as hard as you could? What about—“

“I never intended for you to be so badly hurt.”

“Oh, fuck you, anyway,” Young said.

“You weren’t supposed to find out like that. You should never have thought— he didn’t sleep with Telford. I told you. Of _course_ David brought sex into it; that’s what he _does_ ; it’s about power, so he had to— engage in a bit of over-the-clothes rolling about; it was probably intended as ammunition to use against _you_. But it seemed like a relatively minor inconvenience considering what I was trying to do.”

“A _relatively minor inconvenience?”_

“Oh, don’t act surprised. I’m not a sentimentalist. You accused me of it in the infirmary anyway.”

Young’s hand had fisted in the back of Rush’s shirt. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “Not my finest hour.”

“No.”

“Was that what you did to me, too?” Young asked, his voice not entirely steady. “A _relatively minor inconvenience_?”

“ _No_.” Rush sounded almost anguished. “You’d had a hard day. I wanted to. You enjoyed it. I don’t understand why you’re so intent on turning this into—“

“You used it as a _weapon_. You use everything as a weapon. There are some things a person doesn't use as weapons, Nick.”

“Not in my experience,” Rush said.

“ _God.”_ Young sighed and turned away, scrubbing a hand across his face. “I guess that’s— probably true. Jesus.”

“You say it like it’s a bad thing. But learning that lesson— it’s why I always win.”

“ _Do_ you?” Young said. “Do you think so? _Really?_ ”

Rush was silent against him.

“Not everything is a fight you have to win,” Young said. He was stroking Rush’s back without really meaning to. It had become a natural instinct, something that his body just did. He felt Rush flinch under his hand. “What?”

“Nothing,” Rush whispered. “Nothing. But— I do have to win. I have to win against you. If I don’t, you’re going to _die_.”

“And if _I_ don’t, you’ll— God, I don’t even know! I’m sure I can’t even imagine. I’m sure I’m too fucking _limited_ to even imagine what kind of shit you’re planning to put yourself through. And I can’t—“ Young’s voice cracked. He said helplessly, “I can’t not save him. I can’t just— You don’t understand. You’re it. You’re _it_.”

His hand stilled on Rush’s back. His other hand rose in the air, as though he could outline the shape of the _it_ he meant: something vast and nebulous; a kind of mathematical figure, maybe, something he could only imagine because of his ramshackle, half-borrowed brain; something close to him, but insubstantial; something he could sketch out, but not touch.

Rush said almost soundlessly, “Even now?”

“I don’t know,” Young said, feeling agonized. “I don’t know.”

“If it makes a difference... He didn’t want to hurt you. It’s unbearable to him that he did.”

“Why are you telling me this? Aren’t you just undercutting your own cause? You’re the one who told me to leave him to Telford. Which— God. Just fuck you. Fuck you.”

“Maybe I think,” Rush said, his voice strained and painful, “that there has to be a very small space, right at the point where two opposing substances collide— microscopic— measurable only at the atomic level— just— the narrowest slice of spacetime— where their molecules interact. Where we could— “

Young murmured, “You think so?”

“I don’t know. I’m only saying this because I’m weak. Because I’m greedy. In some ways I’m so much weaker than him.”

“Greedy,” Young said. “I like the sound of that.” He had turned his head to look at Rush, his hand wandering into Rush’s hair.

“You’ll hate me for this in the end,” Rush said softly. “You can't stop what's happening. To me. To us. And you don’t even like me. You barely even like _him._ ”

“You never know,” Young murmured. “Maybe I’m using this as a weapon. Maybe I’m trying to show you what it feels like to actually win.”

Rush met his gaze, with his eyes that were hard and soft and dark and somehow drowning. Young knew what was going to happen before it did. He felt he had no say in the matter; it was simply a physical law of the universe, like the attraction through which chemical bonds were formed. So he wasn’t surprised when they were abruptly kissing, both of them exhaling sharply at the first moment of contact. The kiss was light but a little open-mouthed, and when they parted it was only to kiss each other again, and again, exchanging small kisses, tongues flicking against each others’ lips. It was like they were testing the waters. Young had never kissed this version of Rush before. He didn’t seem as starving as Rush was in real life, which was a tendency that had its own particular appeal, but there was a quality of effortful control in his movements that suggested a hunger just below the surface, one that Young could access with a little work.

“Just so we’re clear,” Young said, already breathless, “I don’t forgive you.” He kissed Rush harder, pushing into his mouth, feeling like _he_ was the starving one, like he had somehow inherited that particular trait from Rush. Were they just passing pieces of themselves back and forth to appease some central cosmic balance that Rush hadn’t yet bothered to reveal to him? He felt almost angry at the idea, and he bit at Rush’s lower lip. “I don’t forgive you,” he said again.

Rush’s response to was to roll back and pull Young on top of him, so that Young could straddle his hips and push their bodies together, pinning Rush’s hands against the bed and working his mouth open with increasing force.

“Can you not-forgive me somewhere else?” Rush said. “Or are there complex psychosexual reasons that you need to fuck me in this bed? I wouldn’t put it past you, you know; you’re very— _mm._ ”

Young had cut him off by kissing him again. “You’re getting pretty presumptuous there,” he said.

“Well, _aren’t_ you going to?”

“Yeah,” Young said hoarsely, digging heavy fingers into Rush’s wrists. “God. Yeah.”

“So.”

Young buried himself in Rush’s mouth again, overeager and enthusiastic, licking and biting. After a while he said, not very clearly, “I’m holding you down.”

“Is that a promise, or—“

“No, I’m— It doesn’t scare you? This version of you. Being held down.”

“Mm,” Rush said. “Not as much. I could learn to like it. _You_ like it.”

“Yes,” Young confessed. He did. He was getting hard.

And Rush liked that he liked it. He flexed his hands teasingly in Young’s grip. “The question is,” he said with a lazy smile, “are you capable of holding me down?”

Young said, “That sounds like a challenge.”

He closed his eyes, tightened his grip on Rush's wrists, and  _wrenched._


	48. Chapter 48

When Young opened his eyes, he and Rush were sprawled out on the fir floorboards of a large covered porch. He could smell spruce and woodsmoke and ice, along with an incongruous touch of apple blossom, before he bothered to look up from kissing Rush and see where they were.

“When I said _somewhere else_ , I should have specified a _bed_ ,” Rush complained, frowning. “I take it back; I’m a sentimentalist. I have _standards_ at least. I’m not just going to let you have me wherever you—“ He turned his head and abruptly stopped speaking.

Young said in a low voice, “There is a bed. Inside. It’s— a good one, if that makes a difference.”

He stood somewhat stiffly, and held out his hand to Rush.

Rush propped himself up on his elbows, looking at him unreadably. “We can go somewhere else,” he said.

“It wasn’t an accident,” Young said.

“Just because you—“

Young said, “It wasn’t an accident.”

They regarded each other in silence for a moment.

Somewhat uncertainly, Rush took Young’s hand and let Young help him to his feet.

Young tried the doorknob. It opened without resistance. The door swung open, and he walked inside. There was already a fire in the large stone fireplace, starting to burn low, as though it needed to be tended. The red Navajo blanket was half-trailing from one of the arms of the leather sofa in a way that suggested someone had carelessly flung it there. The door to the music room was half-open, and Young could see just a hint of the walnut-colored piano, silhouetted against a window that showed mountains covered in snow.

Rush was still standing on the porch.

“What, are you a vampire?” Young said without looking at him. “Do you need an invitation?”

“I wanted to give you a chance to—“ Rush began in a tentative voice. “If you want to— change your mind—“

“I don’t,” Young whispered. He shut his eyes briefly.

He heard Rush hesitate, then step inside the cabin and very quietly shut the door.

Without turning, Young held out his hand. He felt Rush slip his own hand into it, lacing their fingers together. Only then did he open his eyes and look at Rush.

“Well?” Rush said, with an unsteady touch of imperiousness. “Are you going to take me to bed, or aren’t you?”

He looked away quickly, probably so Young wouldn’t see him nervously bite his lip. But Young found his diffidence charming. Maybe a little erotic. Rush so rarely let any hint of weakness show. It was like a little chink in the fortress wall that made Young feel like the whole thing could be taken. That he would find something inside once he’d taken it— something more than just another fortress.

By way of answering, he reached out and smoothed down the points of Rush’s collar. Then very carefully, precisely, he took hold of them and ripped the shirt open, sending its top button snapping off. Then the next button. Then the next. Rush was smiling faintly by the time he reached the fourth one.

“You’ve made your point,” he said.

“I don’t think so,” Young said mildly. “You’ll know when I’ve made my point, because you won’t have a shirt on. Or anything else, preferably.”

He worked his way through the remaining buttons of the shirt. There was something satisfying about the tension of the thread, the release of it snapping, the click of the buttons as they hit the floor. When he was done, he shoved the shirt down Rush’s shoulders. The violence of his own motion startled him. The shirt briefly caught on the buttons at the cuffs, until Young tore those open too and hurled it at the sofa.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Rush said. “I think I like you aggressive. Where is this bed you promised me?”

So they made their way down the short hallway, which had inexplicably acquired several pieces of art that Young wasn’t familiar with. Under a set of strange angular paintings of human faces that looked as though they were made of string— it figured that Rush would be into modern art, he thought hazily; that was Rush all over, hostile and difficult and not giving a fuck about what you might think, and that was no doubt where the paintings had come from, the part of Rush that was stuck in him, like the piano and the fucking Jam albums and the stereo— he let Rush strip off his jacket and shirt before regarding his dog tags thoughtfully and yanking hard at their metal chain.

“Do these come off?” Rush asked. “Or is their purpose to serve as a kind of leash?”

“Fuck you,” Young said. “They didn’t bother you last time.”

“I didn’t think of it last time.” Rush twisted the chain around his fingers.

“You’re the one who needs a fucking—“ Young said hoarsely. The sight of Rush’s fingers toying with that chain was inexplicably erotic. He forgot how his sentence was supposed to end.

“Yes?” Rush said, tugging gently at the chain again with a smile. “Or was that the whole of the sentiment? I’m not going to put up much of an argument, if you want to—“

Young shoved him against the opposite wall with so much force that the impact rattled a painting. Rush was laughing. Young kissed the laughter out of him, like he could physically steal it from him, store it up for all the times when Rush wasn’t laughing, the times when the thought of such a thing was impossible to conceive. He was greedy for Rush’s laughter. He was greedy for other things. For everything. He slid his hands under the waistband of Rush’s pants and pushed at them, trying to get them off without having to waste time with their fly.

“God,” Rush said into his mouth. “You really are incapable of multitasking. You realize you could just _think_ my clothing off?”

Young said raggedly, “That’s not what I want. I want it to be _real._ ”

“It _is_ real. Just because you—“

Young ripped his fly open and shucked the jeans off him in a series of uncoordinated movements. He must have thought _some_ of their clothing off, because Rush wasn’t wearing boots, and neither, he was startled to discover, was he; but that was good, that was easier, because it took no time at all to get Rush naked, and Young liked that: Rush naked and himself half-clothed. He was pushing against Rush, not even kissing him any longer, just drawing long uneven breaths and feeling Rush’s warm bare skin slide against him as he mouthed vaguely against Rush’s shoulder, letting his hands scope out the strange territory of Rush’s nakedness: the jut of his hipbones, the soft hair at the tops of his thighs, his— well, that wasn’t new or strange; Young had held it, worked it, mouthed at it through Rush’s heavy fatigues; had felt an impossible, electric peak of arousal as Rush finished wetly over his hand, but some part of him still didn’t want to articulate the word, or admit it, maybe, even as he felt a visceral hunger for what it meant. Even as Rush’s cock twitched slightly against his fingers as he touched the very hot and delicate skin of it.

“ _God_ ,” Rush exhaled, and got a tight grip on Young’s dog tags and used it to drag him towards the bedroom door, which was open, so that they could more-or-less stumble through it. Their goals were diametrically opposed, which made it hard for them to get anything done; Young wanted to keep _touching_ Rush, and Rush was trying to get Young’s pants off, or direct him towards the bed, or both— Young wasn’t entirely clear.

The bed was a big solid king-size, the kind you got in skiing areas, with a down comforter about as thick as _War and Peace_ , and eight pillows, each one bulkier than the last. The whole thing was topped with another Navajo blanket, which caused Rush, when he finally noticed it, to say, sounding exasperated, “Does _everything_ have to be Western-themed?”

To be fair, the room did also have exposed wooden rafters, and furniture with just the right amount of an unfinished look. But Young said, “You’re getting very demanding. You got the music room and the art in the hall. Anyway, you were going to let me fuck you in that hotel room if it resolved my psychosexual issues.”

“Nothing is going to resolve your psychosexual issues,” Rush said.

He pushed Young towards the bed until Young had no choice but to fall backwards onto it and let Rush crawl on top of him. It was an aggressive move, but once they were on the bed Rush hesitated. He drew his hands slowly down Young’s chest, causing Young to shudder pleasantly, and let them rest at Young’s waistline, where Rush had gotten his BDUs open, but not off of him yet.

“I wasn’t speaking metonymically,” Rush said in a low voice. He wasn’t looking at Young.

“I still don’t know what that means,” Young said. He thought that even if he knew what it meant, he probably wouldn’t have been able to think it through, because he was really, just _really_ turned on by Rush _naked,_ and by Rush _straddling him_.

“If you wanted to—“ Rush made a very imprecise gesture. “I wouldn’t— I mean— I would let you do that.”

Young pushed himself slowly to his elbows. He was starting to get the drift. “You would _let_ me,” he said uncertainly. “Like— an inconvenience?”

“No,” Rush said, without looking up. “No.”

Young said even more uncertainly, “I’ve never— you know that I’ve never, I’ve never done _anything_ with— someone who wasn’t a woman, before you.”

“Yes. I know.” Rush slipped his hand under the waist of Young’s BDUs, and trailed his fingertips absently against the hard crescent of a hipbone, causing Young to suck in a breath and twitch. “Obviously I understand if you’re not comfortable with the idea. I anticipated that might be the case. But I thought you might want—“

“I," Young said, and then he didn't know what to say. "I want to,” he said. But his voice somehow failed to come out of his mouth. He had to clear his throat. “I want to,” he said again.

Rush glanced up at him, quick and nervous, but full of heat. “Yes?”

In response, Young tumbled him over onto the bed, getting between his legs and kissing him in a messy, fervent burst. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I— God. _God_.” He was sure Rush could feel how much he wanted to, especially when the two of them, working together, managed to get his pants and boxers down, and Young kicked them the rest of the way off, so that he was lying naked against Rush, which was one of life’s incredible innovations, and he could have gotten off just from that— from pressing Rush into the bed’s soft, yielding surface and thrusting luxuriantly against his warm stomach and panting out breath after breath against his wet lips.

“I’ll tell you how it works,” Rush said.

“Yeah, okay,” Young said, feeling stupid with arousal. “Tell me how it works. That sounds— that sounds good.”

Which made Rush roll his eyes and say, “I hope I haven’t rendered your brain _completely_ inoperable; some thinking is going to be required for this.”

He meant thinking-into-existence, as well as the ordinary kind of thinking, but that was easier for Young to do when he wasn’t really focusing on it, and once Rush started telling him how it worked, he wasn’t focusing on much of anything except for the way Rush wrapped his legs around him and the noises Rush started to make— small bitten-off not-quite-moans, which caused Young to grin like an idiot.

“You’re so noisy,” he said, planting a reverent kiss against Rush’s chest. “I would never have guessed you were going to be so noisy.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Rush said breathlessly, squeezing his eyes shut. “The things I do for you, and what do I get?”

“I like it. It’s like a little reward system.”

Rush’s face eloquently expressed what he thought of that, but at that point he tensed and said helplessly, “ _God._ Yes. Like that.”

Then he was breathing out those hard-and-soft sounds again, first on Young’s fingers and then as Young pushed into him. Which was—

Young lay his head in the cradle of Rush’s neck, overwhelmed. “Oh, my God, Nick,” he said in a taut voice.

“Say it again,” Rush managed, twisting a hand almost painfully in Young’s hair.

“Nick?” Young said.

“Yes.”

“Nick.”

Rush’s whole body shuddered, and he planted frantic, wet, haphazard kisses across Young’s forehead, nose, cheeks, and neck, kissing him everywhere he could reach.

“Nick,” Young gasped out again. “God. Fuck. I love being inside you.”

He had started to thrust, because even the idea of being inside of Rush was more than he could handle. He thought he was incapable of separating the physical from the non-physical sense; in penetrating Rush’s body, he had penetrated something else, and he was desperate to get deeper in. He didn’t know if that had been what Rush meant to offer. Had Rush known it would be like this? When he looked down at Rush, very naked and vulnerable beneath him, he thought that maybe Rush _had_ known, or had felt that it might be, and that provoked such a surge of— he didn’t know, lust, and affection, and longing, and tenderness, and a kind of fear— that it started to bleed over into Rush along with the licking edges of Young’s pleasure.

Rush made a sharp, punched-out sound and reached up for Young’s dog tags to drag him closer. “Fuck,” he said unsteadily, and didn’t let go, just clutched the chain tightly, pulling at it so hard that it bit into the back of Young’s neck.

“ _Fuck._ Yeah. Yes,” Young said. He was getting a stronger and stronger echo of what Rush was feeling: stretched and filled and made to take more than he could easily bear, but somehow _safe_ at the same time, as Young rocked him back into the mattress, driving into him again and again.

One of them felt safe and one of them felt imperiled, as though absolutely anything could hurt them, now that they’d exposed themselves to it. One of them felt wanted in a way that was like being a power line hit by lightning, charged up past its capacity, and one of them felt _wanting_ in a way they hadn’t known wanting could feel. They were aware that they were starting to blur, that they were sharing their pleasure between them like a flame that could be split between two candles without diminishing it, and it was hard not to just succumb to being _them_ , but Young fought for his own body, because he so badly wanted the experience of being _inside_ Rush, of Rush letting him in, and Rush liked that— of course all thoughts were transparent between them— so much that he couldn’t even muffle the noises he made.

//You’re so good,// Young thought, feeling almost agonized. //You don’t know how good you are. Nick. Nick.// He wanted to hold Rush down so they could stay like this forever, _just_ like this, their minds somehow managing to be two and yet one, their bodies two bodies and one body as they thrust and flexed and collided together, on the brink of, but not quite at, yet, some huge physical completion that Young both dreaded and wanted, because he knew that it was going to make them separate again.

He reached up and untangled Rush’s fingers from the chain of his dog tags, got a firm hold on his wrists, and forced them down against the bed.

“Oh, fuck,  _fuck_ ,” Rush choked out, raw-voiced. Young didn’t know if that was his own reaction, or if he was reacting to how quickly just that motion had pushed Young right to the very edge.

“I’ve got you,” Young said nonsensically. “I’m here; I’ve got you; I won’t let go.”

And that was what they had wanted to say or hear, or they were just out of time, because it was too much; there was only so much a body could take, and their body was abruptly there; they were fucked and fucking through a long moment in which they thought of nothing. They were just a body. They didn’t need to be anything but a body, tightening and gripping and gasping and spilling itself, hot and satisfying and wet.

Young, when there was a Young, found himself kissing Rush’s breastbone, just over the white scar tissue there, then his nipples, then the line of a rib, for no particular reason, then whatever place his mouth chose to kiss. His hair was dripping sweat onto Rush, which Rush would normally object to. But when at last Young lifted his head, Rush was gazing at him with a kind of sleepy tolerance.

“Endearing though this is,” Rush said, “the general position is becoming increasingly uncomfortable.”

“Oh. Sorry,” Young said, abashed.

He had to go through a whole process of figuring out what to do about that, which wasn’t helped by how much of a mess they’d managed to make. “Just think it away,” Rush said, but that felt like cheating, so while Rush rolled his eyes, Young went and fetched a towel; then settled, eventually, by half-draping himself over Rush. Rush carded absent fingers through his damp hair, and then, after a few moments, unexpectedly kissed him on the temple.

“Should I be concerned that the apocalypse is coming?” Young asked wryly.

“Hmm?”

“You’re being affectionate.”

“Mm. That _is_ the conventional behavior.”

“And you’re nothing if not conventional.”

Young felt, rather than saw, Rush smile against him. “You got me a good bed. I’m showing my appreciation.”

“It was the least I could do, all things considered.” Young winced. “I’m sorry a computer virus mined my subconscious for awful things to say to you.”

“Yes, well,” Rush said, “I probably deserved some of them.”

“Not all of them.”

“Our current situation did suggest that you’d come around to that opinion.”

“Yeah, but— it’s important that you know.”

Rush shrugged minutely, and they lapsed into silence for a while, Young comfortable resting with his chin against Rush’s collarbone, drawing idle shapes against the skin of his chest.

“You’re not going to remember this, are you?” Young said eventually.

“Well, _I_ am. He’s not, as you already know, or you wouldn’t have raised the issue.”

Young sighed against Rush’s shoulder. “This is _so_ fucked-up.”

Rush’s hand paused in his hair. “There’s… something else you’re going to have to know, and as long as we’re moving away from the afterglow portion of this idyll—“

“—Sorry—” Young said.

“—You can get him back again from here. In the interface.”

Young shut his eyes.

There was a long silence.

“You knew it was going to have to happen,” Rush said gently.

“I didn’t think about it.”

“That doesn’t wholly surprise me.”

“I can’t,” Young said. “I _can’t_.”

“You have to, so you will. The alternative is letting him die, and we both know you’re not prepared to do that.”

Young had curled himself around Rush’s body without consciously intending to do so, as though he could form a protective shield.

“There’s no point in prolonging it,” Rush said. He had gone tense under Young’s touch.

“How can you say that?” Young whispered.

“Don’t you think I’m the one who should get to decide?”

Young shifted to look down at him and caught Rush in the act of attempting to conceal an expression of deep unhappiness.

“Nick. _God_. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Young said, agonized.

“Don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault. If anything, it’s mine.”

“I don’t think it is.”

“I agreed to this. _He_ agreed to this.”

“Yeah, but— doesn’t he always?” Young shut his eyes and let his head rest back against Rush’s shoulder. “I’m not sure how much that means.”

Rush looked away. “Neither is the AI, anymore. But it didn’t know him then. It didn’t know that people could be like that.”

“No,” Young murmured. “There aren’t many people like him.”

Rush didn’t say anything to that.

“I’ll do it,” Young said finally, in a low voice. “If you want me to.”

“Yes,” Rush said. “If it’s going to happen, this is the best place I could be.”

Young could feel him concentrating on the physical details of his surroundings: the broad exposed timber beams overhead, the half-drawn-back down comforter tangled around their ankles, Young’s body heavy and warm against his. Rush was drowsy and slow with orgasm, a little sore, still sticky in places, but extremely comfortable. He was watching snow fall on the other side of the bedroom window, in big shapeless lacy flakes. He was trying to think of nothing but that. Not the past. Not the future. Not what it was going to feel like. Not the fear. Not the pain.

“Okay,” Young whispered. He could barely get the words out. “Just— don’t forget—“

He didn’t know what to say. He pressed his lips to the side of Rush’s face.

Then he reached into Rush’s mind and tore it into two pieces.

Rush’s body vanished from the bed.

Young lay there for several minutes, feeling incapable of motion. It was as though a stone had been dropped directly on his chest, invisible, but large enough that he was paralyzed beneath it. He couldn’t do anything except struggle to breathe.

Eventually he got up and mechanically dressed in his uniform, even there was no reason to, really. There was no one to see.

He walked through the short hallway with its strange modern string-people paintings, past the fireplace and the sofa and the music room on his left, out onto the porch’s fir floorboards.

He pictured a door in the midst of the snowstorm.

He walked through it.

* * *

Coming out of the neural interface was like waking from a dream. Young supposed that Rush had protected his mind, or the computer program had done its work. He still sat in the chair, feeling lead-limbed, for a moment.

Eli and Scott were hovering over him.

“Colonel?” Eli said uncertainly.

“Yeah,” Young said.

“Uh… is it done?”

Young hadn’t even remembered the girl. The program.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s done.”

He looked around the room. “Where’s TJ?”

“She went back to the infirmary,” Scott said. “You were in the chair for a while. A couple of hours.”

“Yeah.” Young clumsily stood. His legs felt stiff. It was strange to be in a body that hurt. In the interface, nothing hurt. “I need to see her,” he said.

And Rush.

He needed to see Rush.

“She wanted you to head right there anyway,” Scott said. “Given the chair’s, uh, notorious brain-frying properties.”

Young said, “I’m fine. Just tired.”

Neither Scott nor Eli looked convinced. But they let him walk to the infirmary on his own, which he badly needed. He didn’t think he could make conversation with them. It was hard enough just making it through the halls, smiling and nodding to people as they passed. He felt… drained of something he hadn’t even known was in him.

TJ was waiting for him in the infirmary. Scott must have radioed ahead.

They looked at each other.

“Hi,” she said quietly.

“Hi,” he said.

“Are you all right?”

Young sighed and scrubbed his hands across his face. He didn’t know how to begin to answer that question. Eventually he said, “I don’t know how to begin to answer that question.”

“Yeah.” TJ touched his shoulder. “Come on. I want to check your vitals. I’m keeping you here overnight.”

“I’m fine,” he said. “But— I’d like to stay anyway.”

She looked down. “Yeah,” she said.

They walked back to the room where Rush was still sedated. Young sat on a gurney and watched him: looking exhausted even in sleep, his hands resting limp at his sides. TJ had taken him out of the restraints, and his wrists were variegated shades of purple bruises, which were probably partly from the fight with Volker and partly what he’d done to himself, struggling against the canvas straps.

In a low voice, Young asked, “What did you give him?”

TJ said, an edge creeping into her tone, “An antipsychotic. Haldol. It’s standard for agitated psychosis. In retrospect, knowing that he wasn’t actually hallucinating, and had a pretty good reason to be agitated, I would have made a different choice.”

“Yeah,” Young whispered.

He let her check his blood pressure and temperature.

Eventually she turned away. “You should have told me you could see the girl,” she said.

Young winced. “At the time, I wasn’t really capable of understanding that.”

She sighed and crossed her arms over her chest. “I know. I just—“

“Me too,” Young said with difficulty. “Me too. I know.”

TJ walked over to him and dropped her arms to her sides. Young embraced her, closing his eyes.

“I can’t even imagine what this is like for you,” she said, her voice muffled against his shoulder. “It’s already awful enough for me.”

Young drew a long slow breath and let it out. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s—“

He didn’t know how to say what it was.

He was having trouble taking his eyes away from Rush.

TJ pulled back after a while, wiping the corners of her eyes. “God, I’m such a— “ she said, laughing wetly. “Ignore me. You should sleep.”

Young caught her hand. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For what it’s worth. I’m sorry that you were involved in any of this.”

She didn’t say anything to that, just busied herself with putting away her equipment.

When she was about to leave the room, Young said, “TJ. Do you know when he’s going to wake up? I really, uh—“ He heard his voice crack, and struggled to keep it even. “I really need to talk to him.”

TJ lingered in the doorway, pale as a ghost in the dim lighting. “Probably not before morning,” she said. “Go ahead and sleep.”

“Right.”

When she’d gone, Young lay back on the gurney, staring at the ceiling and trying to fall asleep. After a while, he turned on his side to face Rush. He could feel Rush’s dormant mind, like something buried under snowfall. He didn’t want to think about snowfall. He didn’t want to think about anything. He felt his throat close up. He was shamefully close to tears, which he couldn’t really justify. No one was dead. No one was lost. He’d won the battle. But this wasn’t, he thought, how winning was supposed to feel.


	49. Roulette

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains discussion of terminal illness.

In Reno, Gloria wins three hundred dollars playing roulette at the Atlantis Casino, a place David had chosen for reasons he wouldn’t explain. He seemed to find the name terribly amusing. “Maybe I’m just a fan of lost cities,” he'd said. Gloria had said, “You don’t seem the type.” “Don’t I?” “No. You don’t have much patience for ruins. For broken things.” David said, “You’re a perspicacious woman.” Gloria said, “Oh, a quadrisyllabic compliment. I do love those.” David said, “You’d have to, I imagine.” She said, “Nick does know a _few_ words of ordinary length. You’d be surprised. When he’s working, it’s all _Yes, No, Yes, No._ Like a little computer with very limited outputs. You’ll have to learn to cope with that kind of thing.” David shot her a slow, careful look, which she pretended not to notice.

But the casino is perfect. Perfectly terrible. It’s loud and garish and absurd, filled with pink lights and artificial plants and indoor palm trees, a peculiarly American ideal of luxury that feels the pinnacle of wealth is being able to pluck any element out of its original setting and put it down wherever you like. Gloria, who grew up in a Grade II listed townhouse in London, with furnishings and features that she wasn’t meant to touch, feels a sense of relief at the giddy foolishness of it, the transparent falseness that doesn’t pretend to be anything real.

“Nick would _hate_ this place,” she confides to David, when they’ve been wandering the floor for half an hour, drinking dreadful neon-blue drinks with parasols on the rims. “Of course, this place would hate him. He counts cards, you know.”

David says, grinning, “That sounds awfully useful. Maybe we should have brought him along.”

“No; it’s insufferable. My string quartet tried playing Hearts with him once, and he would tell everyone what card they were about to play just as they put it down. We voted to ban him from the next game, and he spent the rest of the night sulking in the kitchen.”

David laughs. “That does sound like Nick.”

“He could sulk for England. Oh, God, he’d kill me if I said that. But _sulk for Scotland_ just doesn’t have the same ring.” Gloria takes another sip of her drink. She isn’t sure what it’s supposed to taste like; mostly it tastes of spun sugar and cheap alcohol. “Oh, look, there’s roulette. I’d quite like to play roulette.”

So they head to one of the roulette tables, and she puts a handful of her chips down on red, then, when she wins, starts putting them in neat stacks on different numbers, more-or-less at random. Eight, three, ten.

“You’re throwing your money away,” David says. “There are smarter ways to bet.”

“It’s my money. I can do what I like with it.”

She suspects that David knows she has rather a lot of money. She suspects that David knows a great deal about her. He’s very careful, David; he would never bet $20 on seven just because the shape of the number appealed to him. He knows the right ways to bet; he knows the right routes to take; he knows how to talk to people. He doesn’t go anywhere unprepared. But—

“I like roulette,” she says reflectively, “because it reminds me of life, really. It looks very organized. It looks like there’s a logical pattern to it. But ultimately you can’t predict what’s going to happen. There’s too many forces at work. If you think you can predict it, you’re probably a fool.”

David, standing at her elbow, is silent. “You don’t know yet,” he says at last, “what they’ll say in Colorado.”

“No. Isn’t that the point? It’s like a coin flip. Do I live? Do I die? You don’t notice how random it all is until it’s your life that’s on the line. You don’t know how minuscule and inexplicable the errors can be upon which you’ll find your life depends. A gene’s expressed or not expressed. Why? Oh, a multitude of reasons. Maybe it happened in the womb. Maybe you drank too many glasses of wine. Maybe your body just stuttered. Like a little white ball teetering between two slots, and it happened to fall into the unlucky one. Except look,” she says, as the wheel finishes spinning. “I think I’ve won. Yes, I’ve won, for once.”

She _has_ won. She collects her chips, but she can’t carry them. They’re too heavy for her stick-thin arms. She stuffs them in her handbag and pushes it at David, as though this had always been her plan; as though she’s accustomed to living in this frail and useless body.

“I need another drink,” she says to him, refusing to meet his pitying gaze. “Do you suppose they have anything that comes in a coconut? I’d quite like to drink something out of a coconut, I think.”

* * *

Later that night, they teeter up to their adjoining rooms, and Gloria excuses herself to go call Nick. She listens to the phone ringing as she pushes the window curtains open and looks out of the strange nightscape of Reno, the mountains rising in the distance and the city lights clustered close to the flat ground. The whole thing has a desolate look. Desert, she thinks, is the right term for this part of America. It’s charming in the daytime, but at night it makes her sad.

“Hello?” Nick says.

“Hello, darling.”

“So David hasn’t driven you off the road yet.”

“He’s a perfectly reliable driver. Not once has he forgotten what exit he was meant to take and swerved across four lanes of traffic, unlike certain people I know.”

“I don’t do that.”

“You absolutely do that. _And_ you get distracted at red lights. You’d sit there for hours if there weren’t people honking behind you.”

“I’m an excellent driver.”

“Yes, well,” Gloria says, “So is David. We’re stopped in Reno for the night. I’ve been gambling away my life’s savings in the most profligate manner. And I drank something called a Blue Hawaiian, which was extremely blue but, I suspect, very minimally Hawaiian. ”

“You went to a _casino_?” Nick sounds intensely perplexed.

“I won three hundred dollars. I plan to spend it all on souvenirs for you.”

“Please don’t. I despise the American West.”

“Perhaps a nice mounted elk’s head. I’m sure I could find a place that sells them.”

“Having been to Colorado Springs, I don’t doubt it.”

“Do these people you work for know how insulting you are about their headquarters?”

“They think it’s part of my Scottish charm.”

Gloria smiles and leans her head against the glass. “Well, they’ll learn soon enough.”

“And what does that mean?”

“You know exactly what it means. Did you make any children cry today in lecture?”

“They’re legally adults. I have no obligation to be attentive to their emotional lives.”

“So you did make someone cry.”

“I’m thickening their skin for graduate school.”

“Oh, Nicholas.” She’s still smiling faintly. She looks out over the sweep of little glittering lights. “I had a good cry today. In a ladies’ toilet on the way out of California. I don’t even know why, really. Some sort of chemical imbalance or another. Poor David. I’m sure he could tell. I’m so English; I get all blotchy.”

Nick says softly, “I’m certain he didn’t mind. But I wish I had—“

“I’m fine. Honestly. I don’t need you here. I should just think I can make it to Colorado and back without you holding my hand.”

She’s being sharp with him because really she thinks his absence _was_ the reason she was crying— not that she was crying because she already missed him, but that she was crying because being separate from him left her nothing with which to fill the dark space inside her that said, You’re going to die. Most days she works very, very hard to protect him, and that takes up a great deal of her time. She doesn’t have to be so conscious of the poisonous body she’s in, the monumental way it has failed her, her inability to prevent it eating her from the inside.

“I like holding your hand,” he says, predictably, and she shuts her eyes.

“I know,” she says. “I know. Ignore me. I’m still a little drunk.”

“If I’d known David was taking you on a tour of tacky bars between here and Colorado—“

Gloria laughs. “It was a very nice bar. Tiki-themed. Though they didn’t serve any drinks in coconuts, which I found disappointing.”

“I can’t believe I married you,” he says.

“I’m sure there must be some place in San Francisco that does. We’re going there as soon as I get back.”

“We absolutely are not.”

“You’ll love it.”

“I’ll leave you there.”

“I’ll take up with a local skipper boat captain. We’ll run away to the Bahamas.”

Nick says dryly, “Where sensitive wooden instruments famously thrive.”

“You don’t believe me,” Gloria says. “I knew it. You've begun to take me for granted.”

There’s a short silence.

“No,” he says.

She can hear in his voice everything he’s not saying. Nick isn’t always good at expressing himself in words. No one ever taught him the right language. Or are we born with the right language, and someone stripped it out of him? She worries. She worries what will happen when there’s no one left to understand the strange, frightened, quiet ways he expresses his affection, which are subtle and heartfelt and not always easy to detect.

“I love you,” she says in a low voice.

“I love you too,” he says, in the same slightly uncertain tone in which he always says it, as though he’s not quite sure he’s managed to repeat the right words back. 

“I should go. We’re getting an early start tomorrow morning.”

“All right.”

“I’ll call you from the road, when I’m selecting your souvenirs. Or else when we get in tomorrow night.”

“If you come home with an elk’s head—“ he says long-sufferingly.

“Perhaps a stuffed jackalope. It would look absolutely adorable on the Bechstein.”

“I don’t even know what a jackalope is.”

“Then you don’t know whether you want one or not, do you?”

“I think I’m fairly certain I don’t.”

“We’ll see.”

“I’m going to call David, and tell him not to let you buy anything that looks like it might at any point have been alive.”

“He’s gone to bed. Don’t wake him up. You can spend your night looking up San Francisco tiki bars.”

“I’ll get right on that,” Nick says. She can _hear_ him rolling his eyes.

“Yes; do. Although I suppose I can always mix my own drinks. Don’t you have to open coconuts with a machete, though?I’m not keen on doing that. Or maybe I am, now that I think of it. It might be quite satisfying.”

Nick says, “I’m going to bed.”

Gloria smiles at the phone. “All right. Lots of love. I’ll speak to you tomorrow.”

“Speak to you tomorrow.”

She hangs up.

For a moment longer, she lingers at the window. She can see her own reflection, ghost-like in the glass. Already she looks too thin, pale and angular where she’d had a soft Botticelli beauty. She minds it. She’s always been vain. She wants her flesh back. Part of her body’s been taken from her without her permission. And the rest is going, piece by piece, cell by cell.

But she turns away, because these thoughts can’t help her. And, anyways, there is something she has to do.

She knocks gently on the door to David’s room. He _hasn’t_ gone to bed, she knows, because she can hear the television, broadcasting some sort of sport.

After a moment, he answers the door: still fully dressed, as she thought he’d be. Never unprepared, David. Always wary. His expression is indecipherable.

“May I come in?” she asks.

He steps aside to allow it. Gloria hears the door close behind her with a click.

“What can I do for you?” David asks. He gestures to a chair. He himself sits on the edge of the bed and grabs the remote to turn the TV off.

Gloria doesn’t sit. “I wanted to talk to you,” she says very precisely, “about what you want with my husband.”

Telford gives her a long, careful look. “That’s classified,” he says.

“No. Not the Air Force. I mean what _you_ want with him.”

His expression grows even more careful.

“I’m not a fool. I’ve seen the way you look at him,” she says.

Something in his face both relaxes and goes more tense. “Gloria—“

“I don’t mind.”

He cocks his head. “You—“

“If things go well in Colorado,” Gloria says, “then you and I can forget we had this conversation. But I have the sense that— correct me if I’m wrong— my odds are not good.”

David looks away. “We have access to a great deal of unconventional medicine,” he says. “But— we haven’t had a lot of success with things like cancer. No.”

She nods steadily. “So. This trip is to keep Nick happy.”

David says softly, “It was an option worth exploring.”

“It’s all right. I’m not angry. It’s like a vacation. And I think… Nick and I needed time away from each other. It’s very difficult. You’ve got no idea how difficult it is.” She does sit then, perching on the armchair with a neat public-school posture. She feels like the need to be imposing. Perhaps it’s just that so many conversations with David feel like competitions: competitions that it’s important for her to win. She draws in a long breath. “Nick is… not good with emotions. Not that he’s unemotional; quite the opposite, actually. It’s important that you understand that about him. He puts himself so wholly into things, and it’s not good for him.”

“Yeah. I’ve noticed that,” David says.

“Unless something changes, my situation is going to go downhill rapidly. He’s not prepared to handle that. I’m afraid of what it will mean for him. That’s why I was glad— well, at first I was quite suspicious of your project, as you know; it just seemed like a lot of faceless military bureaucrats calling at all hours, showing up to harass him, and that made me very nervous. We’re not even citizens. But my impression is that your interest is something more. Something personal.”

David says quietly, “It is.”

“Which is why I want him to work on the project. That way at least there’ll be something. To carry him forwards. He won’t just be… sat in the house or the hospital all day, waiting for me to—“ She closes her eyes. “It’s not healthy. I don’t want that for him. And if there _were_ to be a— a spark, then you needn’t feel that you couldn’t—“

He waits patiently, watching her with curious eyes.

“I want him to have someone who cares about him,” Gloria says, a little unevenly. “In whatever capacity. Whether that’s friendship, or sex— there’ve been men before, before we were married; so that’s not— that wouldn’t be an issue, if you were—“

Slowly, Telford says, “I am.” He clears his throat. “Interested. _Very_ interested. He’s a… special person.”

“Yes,” Gloria says. “He is.”

“Does _he_ know you’re having this conversation with me?”

“No. Not yet.”

“But you’ll tell him?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” David says. “That’s good.”

Gloria looks down. “He _needs_ someone, David. Not strictly _that_ sort of someone, but— it’s so hard for him to find people who _challenge_ him. He learned to play the piano for me; did you know that? So he could be my rehearsal accompanist. At the time— this was when he was at Oxford; my career was just beginning— I thought, oh, the poor dear, he doesn’t realize that’s hardly going to prepare me for working with Mitsuko Uchida or Elena Bashkirova. I hadn’t yet realized that once Nick sets his mind to something…”

“He does have a certain ability,” David says with an unreadable look, “to be… transcendent."

“Yes. Transcendent is a good word for it. At the end of a year, you would have said he’d been playing since childhood. I rather suspect his mathematical studies suffered on account of it, but…” She shrugs, and smiles faintly. “It was a challenge for him. We’ve always challenged each other. Perhaps you know what it’s like to need a challenge.”

David looks away and half-smiles. “Like I said,” he says. “Perspicacious. I suppose I’ve always had my eyes on the stars. Anything closer to Earth just seemed inadequate, somehow.”

Gloria says, “I’m not surprised that you and Nick get along.”

For a moment she hesitates, though: she’s spent such a long time trying to teach Nick to be domestic. Domesticated, she might almost say. Not that their life is what most people would consider domestic; she travels so often for concerts, and around the time that Nick won the Fields Medal, they were always moving: Cambridge, Princeton, Berkeley, and _he_ was traveling a lot. But still, Gloria’s always been rooted in a sense of how one does things, a domestic order. She keeps orchids. Her music library is enormous. She insures her violin. She owns dishes— the good china and the everyday. She has a winter wardrobe. She has a wine collection, for God’s sake, which Nick found the most outlandish idea in the world when she mentioned it. She might as well have been the Queen, to him. He couldn’t fathom thinking further ahead than this month or the next one, often less; for him, wine was something you bought when you meant to drink it. At Oxford, he was worse, almost feral; there was something in him that had simply never learned to function in stable settings, and regarded the whole landscape of it with hostility and fear. Slowly she coaxed him into her world, showing him what a relief it could be when one could trust that the ground under one’s feet wasn’t always on the verge of collapse.

She doesn’t have a clear sense of whether David is domestic or not. But people with their eyes on the stars often aren’t. They’re not interested in anything ordinary.

This worries her.

But look, here David is: sitting in a middlingly tasteless American hotel room, and she’s just noticed that he’s in his stocking feet, which makes him seem softer, somehow— the sight of his plain white socks. He was watching baseball or basketball or some either type of American ball on the TV. He drank Blue Hawaiians with her. He took her to this ridiculous casino. These all seem like ordinary things. In the car he was listening to bad Eighties music, and then, when she made a face, sang along to Hank Williams in an exaggerated accent, just to make her laugh.

The memory reassures her, and it won’t be until much later, too late, really, that she’ll begin to consider how very careful David is. How that had always been the first thing that struck her about him.

Now she says, “I don’t mean to keep you up too late. I’m glad I could speak with you.”

“It’s been enlightening,” David says.

“Yes, well,” she says. “I hope that we’ll continue speaking. I hope that— if you ever want to talk, about Nick, or— that you’ll feel you can speak to me.”

“Thank you,” David says, giving her an intense look. “I appreciate that. You’re really— a very remarkable person.”

They say their goodnights at the door.

Gloria returns to her own room and changes into a nightdress. The bed seems comically oversized for her. She places her phone on the other pillow, as though Nick is inside it, as though some echoes, resonances of his voice remain. Just for a second, she wishes she hadn’t left California. She could have been lying beside him in their bed, watching him slowly fall asleep while trying to read some mathematics journal, until she gently stole the journal away and slipped the glasses from his face, setting them on the nightstand.

“Hmm?” he’d say fuzzily. “But I was—“

“Shh,” she’d whisper. “It’s all right. I’ve taken care of everything.”


	50. The Glass Cage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This interlude contains elements of coercion (both sexual and nonsexual) that some people might find uncomfortable. (To be clear, there's nothing nonconsensual.)

Back then, Telford hadn’t yet been inside of Rush in either of the senses that he later would. There was the sexual sense, of course: crass, but extremely effective, and enjoyable, though Telford had never thought of himself as someone who really went in for that kind of thing. He didn’t believe in all of that sexual identity crap; what mattered, he thought, was not how a man felt, but what a man did, and he was willing to do just about anything or anyone that was going to advance his goals, but that didn’t mean he always enjoyed it. He just came, and saw, and— well, you know the saying. Coming was a surprisingly efficient way to conquer, he’d found. Still, actually fucking men was so involved, and a little distasteful. The first time he felt any real desire to do so was with Rush. It was a desire less about Rush’s body, which was, let’s be frank, nothing to write home about, although something in Telford liked that as well— how small Rush was, how easily he could be held down and made to do what you wanted, which was only ever true in the physical sense— and more about some need for ownership. Fucking Rush felt like breaking into his body and taking possession of the contents.

But not all the contents. That was the problem with Rush. Even if you fucked him, there was some sense in which he remained impenetrable. Sometimes, though not always, after sex, Telford felt he was being coolly appraised and found wanting, as though Rush was the one calling the shots, which wasn’t the case. That rankled Telford. So he was glad when, much later, he got the other chance: to use the communication stones and actually inhabit Rush’s body. But that, too, was a disappointment. By that point, Telford had spent a great deal of time, energy, and money trying to make Rush’s body special, and had come to the conclusion, ultimately that he’d failed; still, there was something about Rush that he couldn’t quite stop wanting to get to. To own. To have in the palm of his hand. Imagine his frustration when Rush’s body turned out to be ordinary: little, nervous, and underfed, without any of the hair-trigger electricity that marked Rush’s thinking. It didn’t grant him access to that inner part of Rush, so what was the point? He was just a large man in a small man’s body, which didn’t temperamentally suit him.

His thing with Rush was never really _about_ Rush; it was about what Rush represented, but Rush had a way of making everything about Rush. Telford had to fight against that constantly. It didn’t make a difference, he reminded himself, that Rush was Rush— the relevant factors could have been characteristics of any body, and in fact, if they were transplantable, that would have been the first thing any reasonable person would have done; Rush was a nightmare of a resource, even before the lab incident: suspicious, self-destructive, hostile, and high-strung. So whatever hidden _Rush-_ ness existed shouldn’t have been relevant. But Telford found himself fixating over it anyway. There was some sense in which he felt that he would never, if he didn’t master it, be able to keep Rush where he wanted him. Rush would always slip away. He had this escape-artist quality; you couldn’t keep him in boxes. Telford wanted to design a box he couldn’t escape. To do that, he would need to know Rush’s exact dimensions.

Later, he thought that problem might be that Rush didn’t have any fixed dimensions. He was always picking up and losing pieces along the way. So maybe it had been, from the start, a doomed endeavor.

* * *

But back then, before Icarus and Destiny, back even before Anubis’s lab, Telford didn’t know any of this yet. He was standing in a hotel room in Colorado, and it was late on a Wednesday night. He was tired, but he was powered by the energy of an obscure sense that he was about to get what he wanted. He always knew when pieces were falling into the places where he had ordained that they should go. It was like everything he touched carried the mark of his hand on it, and because of this communicated its position to him.

Rush was sitting on the end of the bed, wearing a weary, hostile look, which was not unfamiliar on his face. “I don’t know why you bothered coming back here,” he said.

Leaning against the wall, Telford shrugged. “Maybe I just wanted to have a drink with you.”

“Unlikely. You’ve always got an ulterior motive.”

“Don’t _you?_ ”

Rush ignored the question. “I said everything I have to say at the Mountain.”

“Come on, let’s crack the minibar open. It’s on Uncle Sam.”

“Do what you like,” Rush said shortly.

“I will. I generally do, anyway. Something we have in common, I suspect.”

So Telford opened the minibar and surveyed its contents. “You want the whiskey or the gin? Looks like we’ve got a couple of each. I’ll even get you some ice, if you want. Valet service.”

“I don’t want fucking ice,” Rush said.

Telford shrugged. “Suit yourself. Catch.” He pitched the little bottles of whiskey over.

Rush, predictably, fumbled the catch, and the bottles landed on the bed. Rush squinted at the labels. “This isn’t _real_ whiskey.”

“Oh, are you going to give me that whole self-righteous highbrow Scottish bullshit? Like you’re not a fucking street rat. You probably grew up drinking whatever you could steal from the corner store.”

“I don’t appreciate you speculating about my childhood,” Rush said.

“I like it about you,” Telford said mildly. He twisted the cap off a bottle of gin and took a drink, not bothering with the nicety of a glass. “As something of a street rat myself, I appreciate the values it teaches a person.”

Rush said warily, “And what are those?”

“Not to just accept what you’re given. Not to pay attention when other people tell you what’s allowed. That there’s no such thing as what you’re allowed to do, only what you’re able to do. What you can get away with, not what you get.”

Rush took a drink from one of the bottles of whiskey with a grimace. “Your machinations are transparent,” he said. “And I’m not a street rat.”

“You are. It’s cute. You’re always trying to bite the hand that feeds you.”

“A reasonable thing to do, if it’s feeding me bullshit.”

Telford said, “It’s not bullshit, Nick. Everything I’ve told you is true.”

Rush gave him a scathing look. “You don’t give a fuck about ending intergalactic war, or— advancing science, or— any of it. I know you well enough to know that’s not your style.”

“Maybe not. Ending intergalactic war would put me out of business. Still, look on the bright side.” Telford took a drink. “I could finally retire. Start a little farm out in the mountains… what do you think? Goats or alpacas? Alligators, maybe.”

Rush had to look away to hide a grudging smile. “They’re taking you out in a body bag or not at all. I told you. I know you well enough to know that.”

“So we have that in common. This isn’t a job. It’s a vocation.” Telford set the empty bottle of gin on the dresser and shifted away from the wall. “And like any vocation, it requires its risks and its commitments.”

“We don’t have the same vocation.”

“Don’t we?” Telford said. He was standing in front of Rush now. He knew how to move across a room without drawing attention to the fact that he had moved.

Rush looked uncertainly up at him, leaning back a little to do so. “Do we?”

“I know you, too, Nick. Maybe better than you know yourself. I’d say we do. Our vocation is doorways. The type you can’t even see till you’ve cracked the lock. The type you’re not _allowed_ to open. You like that kind of door, don’t you, Nick?”

Telford pushed forward to kneel just a little on the bed, not quite straddling Rush, but almost.

“Yes,” Rush whispered, looking as though he wasn’t sure whether that was the correct answer. His breath was coming faster, and Telford was pleased to see that once again he’d timed things exactly right. Rush was vulnerable at the moment, in a way that Telford found immensely appealing; his hard edges were getting battered down by how hungry he was for someone to make him feel human. For a long time now his humanness had been under assault by the Stargate program’s relentless evidence that he _wasn’t_ quite human, and by his wife’s rapidly declining health, which suggested it might be better not to be. Rush was also, Telford thought, increasingly desperate because he sensed that he wasn’t going to survive his current situation unless he had someone to push and shove relentlessly at him, someone who would take control and remake him into a new kind of creature, one that _did_ know how to survive.

“I like that kind of door, too,” Telford said. “You’re right. I don’t give a fuck about ending intergalactic warfare. I just want to see what’s on the other side of the door. And I want you to do it with me, Nick. I want us to do it together. What else are you going to do with your life that matters as much as this? There’s nothing for you here on Earth. Do this, and you get Icarus. You get it all. This is your future. Our future. Together.”

Rush shut his eyes. A kind of hopelessness came over his face. “Can you,” he said unsteadily. “Can you not— stand so close to me? I need to—“

“What are you afraid of?” Telford murmured. “Afraid you might say yes?”

He brought his hand up to cradle Rush’s face. Rush sucked in a breath. “I—“ he faltered.

“Just say yes. I know you want to.”

Rush hugged his arms across his chest.

“Say it,” Telford breathed against his ear. “Say yes. Nick. I need you.”

Rush flinched. “Yes, all right,” he said all at once, nervous, too rapidly. “Why not? It doesn’t matter, anyway; it doesn’t— make a difference; none of it makes a difference; I don’t know—“

Telford kissed him.

Rush let him do it for a long time before he finally started to kiss him back, but then it was as though the choice had been made, and he might as well commit to it enthusiastically. He pressed forward, kissing in a clumsy, overeager manner, shoving his tongue into Telford’s mouth right away. It was the first indication of the fact that he turned out to be absolutely shameless when he got going, which Telford found pretty hot and funny as hell. Rush’s very next move was to drag Telford down on top of him, leading to a chunk of time spent on some frenzied grinding that kicked off a soundtrack of satisfyingly unguarded moans and gasps. Telford never would’ve guessed Rush for noisy, but loved that he was, and even though Rush let Telford strip him of his clothes in about thirty seconds flat— “God, yeah,” Telford said breathlessly, “you’re really up for it, huh, Nick? You’re so up for it; I like that”— Telford took his time trying to get more of those noises out of him, playing with his nipples till he squirmed; sucking along his jawline.

“Will you just fucking get on with it?” Rush demanded, when Telford had pinned his restless hands down one time too many.

“Give me a break. I’ve finally got you where I want you. Let me have a chance to enjoy you, okay?”

But eventually Telford took off his own clothes as well, and then they did get on with it. It was nothing too fancy that first time, just rutting against each other. Almost immediately, Rush tried to push things too fast again— “Where’s the fire?” Telford asked him, holding him down and giving him a deep, searching kiss. The thing was that beyond trying to rush the main event by rubbing frantically against Telford, Rush kept letting his eyes drift closed, which Telford found annoying, frankly; it was like Rush wasn’t really present, or like _Telford_ wasn’t present, and Rush was doing this to himself. Like Telford was a tool Rush was using, when in fact the opposite was true: Rush was the tool, and he didn’t get to turn the tables. You’re nothing but raw material, Telford thought. You exist to be turned into something, and you should be _grateful_ that I’m here to do that for you.

So he took control via the simple expedient of getting a hand between them and giving it to Rush in long leisurely pulls, which Rush both _really_ liked— “Oh, _fuck_ ,” he choked out, straining upwards— and did not like at all, judging by how he fumbled pleadingly at Telford, trying to get _more._

“Yeah, that’s good,” Telford whispered. “God, you look good like this. You gonna give it up for me?”

Rush breathed raggedly, flinching, unable to hide even the smallest change in his expression as Telford took him closer to orgasm inch by inch. Everything extra-human about him was stripped away as his body tightened. Just before he finally came, he blinked up at Telford, soft and surprised-looking, somehow; confused and innocent and almost hurt. Telford found that endearing and oddly beautiful, in the clinical way he found things beautiful.

“There we go,” he said breathlessly, stroking Rush gently through the aftershocks, at the same time as he was getting himself off without drama. He came with a small exhale onto Rush’s chest, which was another really good look for Rush. Then he was kissing Rush with unfeigned appreciation. He felt he knew Rush much better now, having seen that look that he’d been hiding, that soft, surprised, almost-hurt look. He felt close to him. He often felt closest to other people in the moments after coming. Maybe that was because it the simplest goal that everyone had in common, and Telford was a very goal-driven man.

Afterwards, he got a washcloth from the bathroom and cleaned both of them off. Rush didn’t try to help or resist; he just lay on the bed limply, watching Telford drowsily with a furrowed brow.

“Is this how things are going to be from now on?” he asked after a while.

“I don’t know,” Telford said, glancing at him. It seemed like an odd question. “Is this how you want them to be?”

Rush shrugged minutely.

“God; don’t spare my ego.”

“No, I didn’t mean—“ Rush covered his face and sighed. “Never mind. We might as well, I suppose.”

Telford sat down beside him on the bed. “Nick— this can be a one-off thing. Call it a celebration.”

“Of what?” Rush asked absently.

“You saying yes.”

“Oh, yes. That.”

Telford brushed Rush’s hair back. “Everything all right? You seem… distant.”

“I’m always sleepy, after,” Rush said. “I suppose that’s something you’ll learn.”

“Will I?”

In response, Rush sat up slowly, reached for him, and kissed him: a long, slow, deep, attentive kiss that Telford made an appreciative noise against. “Like you said,” Rush breathed, “I said yes. That means I’ve signed my body over to you, doesn’t it?”

Telford hadn’t thought of it that way, but now that he had, the idea turned him on, enough that he could almost go again. He said, “You haven’t actually signed the papers yet.”

“Well, I will.” Rush released him, looking away. “It’ll be a relief, frankly, to put someone else in charge for a while.”

“They’ll want to give you a chip,” Telford said. He tapped his forearm to show what he meant.

“Yes, yes. I’m not terribly interested. Whatever’s required.”

“That’s the spirit.” Telford fumbled for his discarded jacket and propped himself against the pillows, pulling out a pack of Parliaments and a lighter. “Cigarette?”

Rush glanced at him over his shoulder. “I’ve quit.”

“It won’t take.”

“No. Probably not, I suppose.” Still, Rush hesitated before slowly taking the offered pack of cigarettes. “Anyways, it’s your problem now, isn’t it? What I do to my exceptionally precious body.”

Telford smiled lazily at him. “I could really learn to like this idea, you know.”

They smoked in silence for a while, sitting side by side on the bed. Telford’s arm was draped around Rush, thumb tracing circles against Rush’s collarbone as Rush’s head drooped against his shoulder, but neither of them was inclined to cuddle, thank God. Eventually Rush seemed to shake himself and pulled away, searching for his trousers and putting them on. He went to the window, which showed snow falling in thick flurries, glittering whitely in the hotel’s outdoor lamps. In the distance, the caps of the Rocky Mountains shone faintly under the moon.

“I’ve never understood the appeal of mountains,” Rush said. “It’s like someone took a whole stretch of land you hadn’t gotten to yet and put it in a heap so that you have to stare at it all day. Just let people be oblivious, for God’s sake. At least until they get there.”

“I thought Scotland was full of mountains,” Telford said.

“Not the part I’m from.”

Telford smirked. “Street rat.”

Rush threw him a distinctly unamused look.

“It’s a compliment. I swear.” Telford stubbed his cigarette out and rose from the bed, unbothered by being naked. He put a hand on Rush’s shoulder, then bent to kiss his neck. He always had this unconquerable urge to touch Rush. Sex was just the logical endpoint. It was proprietary, maybe, that need to touch. He hadn’t created Rush yet, but he was going to have, someday. He felt proprietary in advance.

Rush shifted minutely towards him. Probably he didn’t even notice he’d done it. That his body orientated itself towards Telford’s touch.

“Come back to bed,” Telford said. “Or don’t, I guess. It’s your room; you can kick me out if you want.”

“No,” Rush said softly, exhaling smoke towards the window. “I’m not going to kick you out.”

“Or if you need to call Gloria—“

A look of desolation crossed Rush’s face. He turned abruptly and ground his cigarette out in an ashtray on the nearby table.

“Nick—“

“What the fuck do you want? I’m coming back to bed, aren’t I?”

He was. He curled up on the bed, facing away from where Telford was standing. Telford lay beside him and trailed a hand up and down his arm for a while. “Sorry,” he said eventually.

Rush didn’t say anything, just turned and hooked a leg over Telford’s hips to straddle him. “I want to go again,” he said, not very steadily. “Can you go again?”

“Even if I couldn’t,” Telford said, though Rush’s eagerness was already having an effect on him, “I’d make it good for you. I’m going to take good care of you, Nick. You know that, right? Just let me take care of you.”

Rush didn’t say anything, just let Telford roll him over and inch down his body. He fell asleep as soon as they were done, which showed either a touching and unwise amount of trust (unlikely, for Rush) or a basic unwillingness to give a fuck. Maybe some weird mixture of the two, Telford thought, as he tugged the comforter up around Rush’s shoulders, then stole quietly around the room, cleaning up the empty bottles and folding their discarded clothes. When he was finished, he smoked another cigarette, sitting in an armchair and watching as Rush frowned in his sleep. There was something almost sweet about Rush like this, when he wasn’t working to be an asshole. It really did make Telford want to protect him. And he would, Telford thought. He was going to do some very unpleasant things to Rush first, and there would be a rocky transitional period when the Lucian Alliance got involved, because Kiva was always a little bit too liberal with the torture. But things would settle down pretty quick, and Telford _would_ protect him.

He’d worked very hard to get Rush to this point, in this bed, in this hotel room.

From here on out, he was going to take very, very good care of him.

* * *

So: flash forward to Destiny, when Telford finally, after a long interval, got Rush in bed again, although in a slightly different sense. Oh, it started out in more-or-less the same sense; Telford said, “You should be nicer to me, you know. I’m doing you a favor. I could be court-martialed. I’m disobeying direct orders to do this.” “I can be nice,” Rush said in a low voice, his whole demeanor shifting. He’d started out the night hostile, edgy and tense; _I’m not here to fuck you, David_ , he’d snapped when Telford suggested that the bed might be the most comfortable location. Telford had said, _What, did Everett wear you out already? You know, I never thought he’d be much good in bed. I got the sense from his wife that he wasn’t long on imagination. He must be long in other areas, I guess._ Rush had wanted to walk out, then, but he couldn’t. The frustration of it showed on his face. Telford couldn’t resist pushing things a little further. He thought he could do almost anything with Rush that he wanted, and he _wanted_. He was really goddamn tired of being constantly fucked with. Here was the chance to take back control from both Rush and Young at the same time, and Telford had nothing to lose by it. So: _You should be nicer to me_ , he said, and Rush— oh, it turned out Rush was still _very_ good at being nice when he had to be.

Rush climbed onto the bed and crawled forward until he was straddling Telford, who was leaning against the headboard, head tipped lazily back. Rush’s eyes flicked to the Tok’ra device, which Telford was holding. It was a small thing, about the size and shape of a button.

Telford held it up, turning it this way and that so that the dim light caught it. “Pretty lucky that I thought to bring this along. Maybe you could show some appreciation for that, too.”

“I _am_ appreciative,” Rush murmured. His lips brushed Telford’s, a teasing little hint of an almost-kiss.

“How appreciative?” Telford said. He set the memory device on the nightstand so he could use his hands to grip Rush’s hips.

“How appreciative do I need to be?” Rush’s tongue slipped out to tease at the line of Telford’s lips. Telford opened his mouth to let him in, and they kissed for a few minutes like that: a very practiced, artful, delicate kiss.

Telford sucked Rush’s lower lip between his teeth and released it. “Very mercenary of you. There’s not a price tag on it, Nick. We’re just two people being nice to each other. Like the old days.”

Rush said flatly, “Like the old days.” Something flickered in his face for a moment, before it vanished beneath a smooth, unreadable expression. He leaned in to kiss Telford again, more heatedly and with a hint of violence to it, which Telford liked.

Telford slid his hands up under Rush’s shirt and pulled him close. “Yeah,” he breathed. “That’s nice. You _can_ be nice.”

Rush inhaled sharply, arching his back in a way that was probably performance. “I told you that I could be.”

Telford was getting hard, which he was sure Rush could feel; it was only natural, when he had Rush in his lap, displaying his signature blend of resentment and submission, which had always done a lot to turn Telford on. He liked this new Rush, he thought, even more than the old one; this Rush was frail and ferocious and only a little bit human, all spitting and snarling, but also more breakable somehow. Telford liked that. There was something really arousing about it. He liked getting his arms around this frail ferocious Rush and kissing him aggressively, grinding his hips up into him again and again.

Gradually, eventually, he got impatient for more contact, and rolled them over, pinning Rush beneath him on the bed and devouring his mouth in quick, rough, greedy movements. It was nothing they hadn’t done before. But after a moment, Rush stiffened and shoved at him. It took a couple of tries for Telford to get what he was doing; then he backed off and Rush scrambled away.

“I don’t—“ Rush said, breathing hard, staring at him. “I don’t let people do that anymore.”

Telford said, nettled, “Oh, come on. I was barely holding you down.”

“Fuck you,” Rush said almost automatically.

“I know exactly what you’re doing. Quit trying to fucking guilt trip me over something that was—“

“I gave you what you fucking wanted; now give me the fucking device!”

“Why do you have to be so goddamn difficult?” Telford demanded.

“For fuck’s sake,” Rush said, sounding like he was barely controlling his temper, “you can jerk off on my fucking stomach if you’re so hard-up for it; you used to like doing that, and I honestly don’t give a damn. But I’m tired of this fucking game, and I’m not going to play it with you any longer.”

“Fine,” Telford said shortly. He grabbed the Tok’ra device and pitched it across the bed. “Go fetch.”

So Rush, his face set and furious, had to crawl after it. And when he got it, he didn’t know what to do with it. Telford let him fumble with it for a few excruciating minutes before he finally rolled his eyes and sighed.

“Bring it here,” he said.

Rush glared at him mistrustfully.

“For God’s sake. What do you think I’m going to do to you?”

“A number of possibilities from my experience present themselves.”

“If you were really worried, you wouldn’t have shown up. You know I’m not going to hurt you; not just for the hell of it.”

Rush looked down for a moment. “Yes,” he said quietly. “I do know that.”

“So just— come here, why don’t you.”

Rush did. Telford tucked his hair behind his ear in a gesture that felt surprisingly intimate, and felt with the tips of his fingers for the place where the device was meant to puncture the skin. That felt intimate, too.

“You know,” he said, “I’m not the one you should worry about. I’m very predictable. You know exactly what I want. There’s only two things you should worry about. The first one when you don’t know what people want, or why they want it, usually because they don’t know themselves. That makes them hard to predict. The second one is tricking yourself into ignoring what people want because you’re so goddamn compromised yourself. That’s when you really get in trouble.”

Rush was still under his hands. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked at last.

Telford shrugged. “Maybe it’s an apology. I didn’t mean to scare you. That’s not what I’m into in bed.”

“You didn’t _scare_ me.” Rush folded his arms stiffly across his chest.

“Or maybe it’s because I have a vested interest in keeping you alive.”

“Alive and under your thumb,” Rush said.

“Do you blame me? Everyone wants the nuclear weapon. The man who comes out on top is the one who can get it and hold onto it.”

“The nuclear weapon.” Rush looked away. “That’s me, is it?”

“It’s a hell of a thing to be,” Telford said. He rested his hand at the nape of Rush’s neck. “Are you really surprised I want you? Young doesn’t deserve you. He’s got no vision. He wouldn’t have the first idea what to do with a nuclear weapon.”

Rush’s mouth twisted in a painful smile. “But, you see,” he said, “Young doesn’t think of it like that.”

He lay back on the bed and, without any hesitation, shoved the Tok’ra device into his head.

* * *

Now, confined to his dimly lit quarters, Telford wonders if Young knows how he thinks about it. Young isn’t bright enough, maybe, to have figured out how confused his thinking is. He treats Rush like a person, but Rush isn’t a person; he wants Rush to be a person, but Rush doesn’t know how. There’s a cruelty to it, like expecting an animal to act human and punishing it when it can’t do what you demand. What Rush needs is for someone to treat him like the machine he is. He doesn’t realize that he’d be happier if someone did. Well, of course he doesn’t; he’s always been difficult— childish, almost. He’s never had the faintest idea what’s good for him.

That was why his partnership with Telford was so successful. He gave up control, at least a little bit, and let Telford tell him what to do. And that’s why he’s struggling so much now: because Young isn’t the kind of person who can do that. Young’s an idiot who believes in things like free will. If only Telford had been here, like he was supposed to be; he and Rush, together, could have been in charge of two galaxies by now.

Maybe this latest falling-out will finally tear Rush and Young apart, though. Maybe there’s still time for Telford to do what he feels in some sense he was made to do, not in any use of the phrase that implies a maker, but a use that acknowledges this role as his perfect fit, the most apt expression of all his powers. As Rush, too, was made to do something he hasn’t yet achieved.

Telford closes his eyes and imagines the possible future: the multidimensional box he would build to keep Rush in, made of strict discipline and tenderness and sex. The right kind of box, he thinks, is one where the person inside it never sees its outlines. They never come close enough to the walls to touch. That was the kind of box he was working on, back before Icarus. Maybe he can still finish it. It won’t be a prison, not exactly; that’s not what Rush needs, or what Telford wants. Just a safe place to keep something very precious, a place that precious thing will never leave.

What troubles him is the nagging suspicion that Young might have gotten there before him. That Young has stumbled, somehow, without putting in any of the work, upon that secret inner layer of Rush that resists penetration. Has Young figured out how to build the box? What size it’s supposed to be, what shape? How to make sure Rush stays inside it? What’s the missing part? Telford almost wants to ask him. But Young, if he didn’t hit him again, would probably just look at him blankly with that creased, confused expression, too dull to know what Telford was talking about. Maybe Telford could get it out of him anyway, because there’s nothing Young is capable of understanding that Telford can’t understand to a more advanced degree. _Tell me_ , Telford would say, shaking Young until it tumbled out of him. _Explain it to me. Tell me what the part I’m missing is._

 


	51. Chapter 51

_“Scio. Megei deice— quid numc? Ne'm. Megei doce.”_

The sound of Rush’s voice woke Young. For a moment, he couldn’t remember where he was, or what had happened. He rolled over, groggy and frowning, about to complain that Rush was being loud, and speaking Ancient, and almost certainly talking to the AI, and, for Christ’s sake, out of bed at what felt like a pretty ungodly hour, when he could still have been nestled next to Young. Then the texture of the sheet beneath Young warned him that he wasn’t in his bed, and the rest descended on him.

He opened his eyes.

At first he was confused and a little alarmed, because Rush wasn’t on the gurney next to him. A pile of blankets was rumpled on top of it in a way that suggested he _had_ been at one point, but Rush himself was nowhere to be seen.

 _“Ne’m_ ,” Rush said, sounding cross. “ _Ne teneo. Ne potis—“_ He broke off, as though he’d been interrupted, and sighed.

Young looked down. Rush was sitting on the floor, his back against the infirmary wall, holding his unlaced boots and frowning at them with intense frustration. He didn’t seem like he was in great shape. He looked exhausted. He was visibly shivering, and his eyes were unfocused and vague.

Very cautiously, Young tried brushing a mental fingertip against his mind. He realized at once that there was no need to be cautious. There was no way in hell that Rush was going to notice him; his weather was slow, thick, sickly-greenish, and swamp-like, and his thoughts were crawling underneath it like fish trying to plow through mud. There was an unhappy, early-hurricane feeling to the whole thing, like a storm was trying to get started and not quite managing it yet.

“ _Ne quor?”_ Rush said petulantly.

The AI was sitting cross-legged in front of him, looking like a very fretful Daniel Jackson. “Because,” it said. “It is not a good idea. And I wish that you would please speak English. If you do not practice your English, then you will lose this language skill.”

“ _Megei ne pertenet.”_

“Yes, it does.”

“ _Et duena idea_ ita _est. Megei cresde.”_

“English, please.”

“ _Iacte scorax.”_

The AI sighed, and stared at the floor for several seconds. “Nick, you are too tired to do anything right now.”

“ _Weros n’est.”_

“English.”

 _“Quor? Quor tegei pulla pertenet?_ ” Rush did sound unbelievably miserable and tired. His words were slow, stumbling, and listless. He yanked at the laces of one of the boots in front of him with a kind of hopeless ferocity.

“Colonel Young does not speak Ancient. If you do not speak English, then you will not be able to talk to him.”

“ _Megei ne pertenet. Semanticos n’est.”_

“Yes, it does. It is.”

_“Is megei fathlari ne welhest.”_

“Nick,” the AI said quietly, “that is not true.”

“ _Itave. Est._ ”

“You are very upset right now. You are not thinking clearly.”

Rush jerked back. “ _Iacte scorax_ ,” he said, sounding more wretched than angry. “ _Clara mentid conagitans_ ’som. _Quor hod deicas?_ ”

The AI shut its eyes. “ _Me penitet,”_ it said quietly. “I forgot.”

“ _Clara mentid conagitans ’somque Anglicam fathlari n’indeo.”_

“You _do._ Please.” It sounded nearly as miserable as Rush. “If you put away your shoes and try to rest, then you will feel differently tomorrow.”

“ _Weros n’est_ ,” Rush said. He hurled the boots away from him in frustration. “ _Hod obleviscere. Sine calceois eo.”_

“Absolutely not,” the AI said hurriedly. “Without shoes is not an acceptable condition for walking. Your foot is still injured, and it is not socially appropriate for an individual to—“

“Fuck you,” Rush said almost inaudibly. He was staring fixedly at the floor. “I go. No one tells me how to go. _No one._ ”

The AI looked at him in silence for a moment. Its projection flickered. “Nick,” it said.

“ _Megei en illod wocse_ Nick _ne deice.”_

“I do not understand your meaning. It is my voice. I wish you would— _please_ would you put your shoes on. Perhaps you could wind the laces around your ankle and tie them into a knot?”

Rush tipped his head back against the wall and sighed. He shrugged without much energy. “ _De hod ‘ligatod’ ne scio_ ,” he said. But he crawled across the room to get the boots, and started trying in a very haphazard, uncoordinated manner, to get one onto his foot.

The AI watched him. “I do not understand where you are so determined to _go_ ,” it said.

Rush glanced fleetingly at Young’s gurney. Young quickly closed his eyes.

“Away,” Rush said. “Unimportant. No one keeps me here. No longer.”

The AI didn’t say anything for a moment. Then it said, “Your English is very good. I give you a gold star.”

A faint, reluctant smile crossed Rush’s face. “Thank you,” he whispered.

He had managed to get the first boot on. He began struggling with the other, which seemed to go a little easier, then began laboriously attempting to wind the left boot’s laces around his ankle. It wasn’t a project with which he was having a lot of success.

“Need some help with that?” Young asked quietly.

The AI vanished.

Rush flinched, and stiffened. He didn’t look up. “No,” he said in a low voice.

“ _Want_ some help with that?”

“No.”

“Okay,” Young said. He climbed slowly off his gurney and sat cross-legged at the base of it, watching for a while as Rush tried to coordinate his shaking hands enough to tie the laces into a square knot. “How are you feeling?” he asked eventually.

“Fine,” Rush said in the same almost nonexistent voice.

There was a short silence.

“Do you want to know how _I’m_ feeling?” Young asked.

Rush paused for a long time, staring at the right boot’s laces. Finally his shoulders jerked in a tiny shrug.

“I’m fine,” Young said.

There was another silence.

“Do you want to maybe talk—“ Young began.

Rush shook his head unsteadily.

“Okay,” Young said. “If it makes a difference, I’ve been awake for a couple of minutes, so I know your English isn’t really all there yet.”

Rush’s hands stilled. He shut his eyes, shoulders hunching forward. “No,” he said at last, in a defeated voice.

“So could we maybe—“

“ _Ne scio quod deicere. Nehil deicere n’est.”_

“I’m pretty sure there _is_ , like, a _lot_ to say. Full disclosure: I already, uh—“ Young swallowed. “I already talked to you about it in the interface some. Sort of. So I know my reaction might have been a little… unfair.”

“ _Conagites? ‘Pauros.’ Iacte scorax.”_

“Yeah,” Young said. “I guess I deserve that.”

“I do not— I amn’t—“ Rush took a shuddering breath. “ _Not_ what you said. Not a liar. Not a whore. Fuck you. You don’t get to—“

“I know,” Young said with difficulty. “I know you’re not.”

Rush tucked his knees close to his chest and buried his head in his arms. “ _Numc cum ted fathlari ne potissum_ ,” he said, his voice muffled.

“I don’t know what that means,” Young said.

“ _Scio. Nehil. Ne pertenet.”_ After a minute, Rush scrubbed at his face and tried to stand. He’d managed to more-or-less tie the laces of his boots, but he had a hard time making it upright. He was still shivering.

Young also climbed to his feet. “Nick,” he said carefully, “I think maybe you should stay here.”

“No,” Rush said shortly.

“You’re really tired, and you’re really cold. I’ll get you another blanket, or— if you want, I can—“ Young reached out towards him.

Rush jerked backward violently, stumbling into the gurney and almost overbalancing. “Do _not_ touch,” he hissed. “ _You_ don’t touch. You don’t get to— _this—_  and then—“

“Whoa,” Young said, holding his hands up. “All right. I’m sorry.”

“ _Sorry?_ ” Rush lashed out with a fist, hitting a plastic cup and sending it flying off the nightstand. The light over the gurney rained down sparks and went abruptly dead; the one over Young’s gurney started flickering uneasily.

“Nick—“

“ _No._ No. Not _Nick._ Not _sorry. Insufficient. Quom deico—_ When I’m saying to you _I don’t like_ , isn’t— isn’t— for being fucking _knife_ you keep in box, take out when _I don’t do what you say._ When you’re seeing in my head things I— things that—“ Rush made an agonized sound and slammed his hand against the gurney. “ _Hurt_ things. It’s not for _hitting_ into— _quomodo deicetor—_ fucking _chains._ Chains _._ _Not._ Who does this is _David._ Not you. _David._ ”

Young felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“Yes. Very sorry. Until next I don’t do what you say. Then not much sorry.”

“That’s not true.”

“No? Why.”

“It has nothing to do with you not doing what I say. Although in this case I was telling you not to do something to try to _protect_ you, so, yeah, I was a little bit pissed that—“

“ _Protect_? Fuck you. Protect? _Control._ ”

“ _No_ ,” Young said. “Protect as in _protect_. But I thought you— you _know_ what I thought you did. Which, by the way, to be fair, you _did do_.”

“I _know_ ,” Rush bit out savagely.

“Not that I’m—“

“Shut up. _Shut up.”_ A light on the far side of the room emitted a high-pitched warning sound and exploded. Rush ignored it. “I _know_. Everything. Yes. Me. Everything bad you think. I _know_. David snaps his fingers, says, _be nice,_ me: nice. Me? So up for it. Anything to get what I want. Always. Yes. No real— nothing— _quomodo deicetor— fuck._ Nothing _real._ Nothing. Inside here.” He struck his palm against his breastbone as part of an angry, general motion that seemed to encompass his entire chest. “ _Nothing._ So. Don’t give any fuck if you hurt. Don’t. _Don’t_. David? Leave you in bed? Make sleep? _Don’t._ Flashback make you sick? Won’t block? Could die? Same. Stupid decisions. Timetables. Fuck you. I don’t. I _don’t_. Because— _nothing_ inside. _Tenes?_ I _know._ You? Right. Always. Me? Worst person.

He spun on his heel and folded his arms over his head, shivering so badly he could barely stand up.

“I know that’s not true,” Young said in a wretched voice. “Nick. I’m so sorry. Can I please just— I can’t stand seeing you like this.”

Rush backed away from him as he stepped forward. “You _can_. You _do_. Worse.”

“I know. I know I did.”

“Yes. So. _Fuck off.”_

Young took a deep, shaky breath. “Look, I don’t know what you want me to say, except that I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I fucked up. We both fucked up, okay? And we’ve spent a _lot_ —“ His throat clenched. “A lot of time hurting each other over the past couple of days. There’s some stuff that you don’t even— it doesn’t— it doesn’t matter right now. I just think— maybe we could try not doing that for a little while. Because I really—“ He broke off and swallowed hard. “I really don’t want to hurt you. I really— I can’t; I just need to— So can we try that out? Like– maybe with a truce? Can you trust me that long? So I could help you warm up a little?”

Rush gave him a hard, mistrustful look.

“Please,” Young whispered.

“How long is truce?”

“You decide.”

“Five minutes,” Rush said shortly.

“Okay,” Young said. “Okay. I’ll take it. Does that mean I can—?”

Rush nodded stiffly as Young stepped forward again. “Five minutes _only_.”

“Yeah. I get it.”

But once Young had very cautiously wrapped his arms around Rush and tucked his face into the cradle of his neck, he thought that he wouldn’t physically be able to let go again. Rush was _so cold_ , and Young wished helplessly for some way to get him inside his own skin, where he could keep him warm and safe. At the same time, he also just wanted Rush that close to him. He couldn’t get close enough, no matter how much he tightened his grip. His chest felt like it was knotting and trying to unravel at the same time.

He tried projecting some confused sense of this at Rush, and maybe it made a difference, because after a few minutes, Rush slowly brought his arms up around him to very lightly touch his back. “For warmth only,” he said. “One minute extension of truce.”

“Okay,” Young said with difficulty. “Maybe— maybe after that we could try getting out of here and going home. What do you think?”

Rush stiffened slightly. “Who says I go to _your_ home. No one says. Tamara says I go to _where I want_. _Not_ with you.”

Young was silent for a while. “Oh,” he said at last.

Then abruptly he didn’t think he could stand to be holding Rush. He had to pull away, so he did, backing towards the gurney he’d slept on, turning and leaning over to prop his elbows on it so he could bury his face in his hands, his breath coming raw and uneven. It wasn’t even that he was trying not to cry. He just couldn’t keep what he was feeling inside his body. Mostly it was a relentless, physical sense of loss, like something was being very slowly cut out of him, and he knew, he _knew_ that it wasn’t even really, maybe, about what Rush had said, that it wasn’t really about _this_ Rush at all, except that it was, of course; it was about _Rush_ , every version, being ripped away. No matter how hard he tried to hold onto them.

He wasn’t paying attention, so he didn’t notice that Rush was standing behind him until Rush put a hand on his shoulder.

“You are upset,” Rush said uncertainly.

Young choked out a laugh, which made him sound like he _was_ crying. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m pretty upset.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Young said wretchedly.

“Why because?”

“How can you ask me that?”

Rush made a helpless gesture. “Where I go. Why it’s important? Confusing. You. Confusing.“

“Why it’s _important?_ Because I don’t want to not be with you, you _idiot_. Why the fuck do you think I was so angry, before?”

Rush reached out and touched the tape on Young’s right hand, marking the place on his knuckles where he’d punched the observation deck’s wall. “Very angry,” he said quietly.

“Yeah. I was.”

“Because of _me._ So.”

“Not just angry, though. I don’t— I don’t know what I was feeling. Upset. Really, really upset.”

“Better,” Rush whispered. “Better for you to feel. Staying away. Better for you.”

“ _No_ ,” Young said, pulling back from him.

“You will see. Better.”

“It’s _not better,_ ” Young bit out shakily. “Do you understand that? _Me tenes?_ It’s _not better._ _I_ —“ he said, pushing his hand flat against his chest, the same gesture that Rush had made before— “have a _lot_ inside here. A _lot_. Just an absolute _fuckload_ of shit I don’t even understand, and I know you’re always trying to convince me it’s not real, but it _is real to me._ It is _very real._ Why do you think I keep fucking everything up so badly? Because I’m trying to— I’m _trying._ Because it’s _real_ , and it’s my _life._ It’s not a game that we’re playing, and it’s not going to go away because you’ve decided that would be easier for everybody. You doing that is _not better_. Do you fucking _get that?_ ”

“Yes,” Rush said almost soundlessly. He had frozen with his hand in the air, looking stricken.

Young sucked in a long breath and scrubbed at his eyes.

Slowly, Rush lowered his hand.

“Sorry,” Young said unevenly. “I didn’t mean to yell at you. I’m sorry.”

There was a short silence.

“Truce?” Rush offered in a low voice.

“Yeah,” Young said, exhausted. “Yes. Sure. I guess. How long is this one going to last? Ten minutes?”

“Renegotiate? When home?” Rush darted a quick, unsure look at him.

Young said, taken back, “ _My_ home?”

Rush shrugged. He stared down at the deck. After a minute, he shuffled forward until he sort of collided with Young, not doing anything that Young would have called an embrace, but just pushing hard against him in a way that was both uncertain and aggressive, somewhere between a demand for attention and a preliminary investigation, like Young was a wall he was little bit afraid to test. Young touched his back, not sure if that was the right thing to do. It must have been, because Rush leaned into him. Young let his hands turn heavier, drawing him close.

“Home,” Rush said, barely audible.

“Okay,” Young said quietly. “Yeah. Okay.”

Rush nodded minutely. He didn’t move. After a moment he said, the words slightly muffled. “Not what you said. Me. _Not_ what you said.”

Young closed his eyes. “I know,” he said. Very gently, he pressed a kiss to Rush’s forehead. “I know you’re not. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Nick.” He pulled back just enough to take Rush’s face in his hands. “I’m so sorry,” he said, and kissed Rush on the cheek. “I’m so sorry.” On the other cheek. “I’m so sorry.” On the mouth.

“Apology tour,” Rush murmured, his mouth crooking a little.

“Yeah,” Young said. He leaned in and touched their foreheads together. Rush was still really cold. “To be continued, maybe? Later. If that’s something you want. Depends on the conditions of the truce.”

“Yes,” Rush said. “You don’t get presumptuous. Truce is not— _quomodo deicetor. Fermos. Tenes?”_

“Firm?”

Rush furrowed his brow. “Yes. Or—“ He touched Young’s bicep. “How is?”

Young frowned at him. “My arm?” Then he understood, or thought he might. “Oh,” he said, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “Strong?”

“Yes.” Rush looked at his hand, fitted against the curve of Young’s bicep. “Very strong.”

Young suspected Rush wouldn’t have said that if he hadn’t still been drugged. But he still felt weirdly touched by it. “I get it,” he said. “A fragile truce. I’ve got to watch my step.”

“Yes,” Rush said. “Good. Then. We go home.”

* * *

Of course, going home was easier said than done, considering that Rush could barely walk in a straight line. He didn’t want Young to help him, either; he insisted on leaning against the corridor wall.

“Not invalid,” he said vehemently for the third or fourth time, when they were about halfway there.

“I know,” Young said tiredly.

“ _Hod facere potissum. Facile. Boetheam n’indeo.”_

Young decided to change the subject. “You know, you haven’t asked me what happened to the Nakai program.”

Rush frowned intently down at his wobbly feet. “Tamara says you kill it. Sit in chair. Erase.”

“Yeah,” Young said. “Sort of. It was a little more— complicated than that.”

Rush paused and looked closely at him. “Not easy,” he said uncertainly. “Difficult for you.”

“No,” Young said softly. “Difficult for _you_. It, uh— took a lot of effort. A long time. That might be why the AI’s being so nice to you.”

“Always nice to me,” Rush said. “So worried always. Tries to— _quomodo deicetor_ — resemble. Resemble you. Nick would you please go to sleep. Nick would you please eat dinner. Nick would you please sit down. Nick would you please listen to Colonel Young. Nick would you please not listen to Colonel Young. Nick would you please not—“ He stopped and looked down. After a moment, he said, “Very annoying. Weeks and weeks like this.”

Young stared at him incredulously. “Well,” he said at last, “I usually don’t say please.”

“No.” Rush’s shoulders hunched. “Not the magic word anymore.”

For a moment, Young didn’t say anything. “Sorry,” he said at last. “I guess _sorry_ should probably be the new magic word.”

Rush shrugged without looking at him.

Young sighed and tried to get the conversation back on track. “You know, all things considered, I find it pretty hard to believe the AI tells you to listen to me.”

“Yes, well. Maybe all lies. Liar. Ulterior motive always.”

“You or me or the AI?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m not a liar, and I don’t actually think you’re a liar.”

“Yes,” Rush said again, unhelpfully. His weather had significantly darkened.

Young sighed again and stopped, turning to face Rush. “Hey,” he said quietly. “Truce. Remember?”

Rush looked away, his mouth tight. “ _Scio_.”

“We’re almost there. Then you can renegotiate. You can think up a whole set of terms, if you want.”

Rush shrugged again, without much energy. “Tired.”

“Yeah, I know you are.” Young put a careful arm around his shoulders.

Rush looked at it, but didn’t say anything.

Young had thought maybe being tired meant that when they got to his quarters, Rush would actually go straight to bed. Young himself still felt like he’d been raked over a boulder field. He just wanted to sleep for about twelve hours: sleep in his own bed, with Rush curled up against him, no need to worry about what the hell was happening to him.

But of course he’d forgotten that he hadn’t been back to his quarters since— so when they got there, the floor was still covered with the blurred remains of the ghostly chalk diagram that Rush had drawn, and the tea cups were still sitting on the table, and the bed showed where Young had slept alone and thrown off the blankets in a hurry.

Both of them stopped short just inside the door. Young covered his face with a hand, hit by an echo of misery and helplessness, not sure if it was coming from himself or Rush. “Just ignore it,” he said, exhausted. “We’ll deal with it tomorrow.”

Rush nodded wearily. But he paused at the couch when Young headed towards the bedroom, leaning against it like that was as far as he was prepared to go.

Young glanced back at him.“Really?” he said, before he could stop himself. “You think the couch is the less fraught option?”

Rush’s whole body flinched. Slowly he sank onto the couch and sat staring fixedly at his hands.

Young scrubbed at his eyes, feeling awful. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I’m— really tired too. That’s the only reason I said that.”

“Fair,” Rush said in a low voice. “Truce over.”

“No. That doesn’t mean I get to be an asshole to you.”

“Deserved.”

“No.” Young dropped wearily onto the table across from him. “Well, okay, maybe a little bit. I told you, I talked— I sort of talked to you in the interface. I get that you’re not— that you don’t—“ He was trying to avoid saying, _that you have really fucked-up ideas about sex,_ which was kind of what he was thinking. “That we don’t always think about things the same way, maybe.”

“We talk?” Rush was still looking down, his mouth tight. “You forgive?”

“Actually, I think I specifically said I _didn’t_ forgive you, but I wasn’t mad at you anymore, so I guess I did.”

“Oh,” Rush whispered. He shut his eyes. Then his fists clenched suddenly, and he hunched in on himself. “ _Quor ne memonai_?” he said, sounding almost tearful with frustration. “Interface. We talk. We always talk, and— Fuck. _Fuck_ this. _Memonaisse welhoque nemquam memonaique—_ fuck. _Hod odaio._ And why no English? Why no _fucking_ English? _Why_? Like fucking _child_. Can’t even— be _saying_ to you things what— _neod ne pulla telho!“_

“Whoa,” Young said, alarmed. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Rush pounded a fist against one of the couch cushions. “ _Not okay!_ ”

“It _is_.” Young shifted to the couch and got an arm around Rush, who resisted at first, and then, shivering and exhausted and obviously feeling wretched, leaned heavily into him. “It’s okay,” he murmured, pressing his mouth to the top of Rush’s head. “I promise. I kind of understood that. I’m not that dumb. You’re upset that you don’t remember? Maybe we can talk about it tomorrow. You’re just really frustrated right now because you’re tired, and TJ drugged you. Which is my fault. So go ahead and get mad at me if you want to be mad.”

“Yes,” Rush said, his voice cracking, defeated. “Am.”

“Yeah.” Young smoothed a hand up and down his arm in heavy, even motions. “I know. That’s fine. Worry about that. Don’t worry about the English. The AI’s wrong. I’d totally learn Ancient for you. It might take me a while, but I’d get there eventually. Look how good I’m doing already, right? Um— _Wide quod duenos io—_ I don’t actually know how to say that.”

Rush’s response was to bury his face against Young’s shoulder to stifle a low anguished sound. His weather was more purely miserable than Young had ever seen it, probably not helped by the way the Haldol was still slowing him down. Young tried projecting a thin ribbon of reassurance at him, but this only provoked an unbelievable swell of distress, welling up from some hidden place inside Rush that seemed made of pain.

“Nick,” Young said softly. “What’s going on?”

Rush shook his head. His breathing hitched.

“What is it? If it’s something I said or something I did, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that everything played out the way it did. Well— almost everything. I'm not sorry for punching Telford. I stand by that. If anything—“

“Stop,” Rush whispered unevenly. “Stop. Stop. Stop.”

So Young stopped. “What?” he said.

“Don’t be sorry. Don’t. Me? Much worse.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Young said. He tried to keep his own voice from struggling. He was thinking, with a flash of almost nauseating pain, of Rush focusing on the snow outside the window in the interface. Rush’s body disappearing by his side, till there was no trace left at all of its warmth. “In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s not.”

“ _Weros est_ ,” Rush said almost inaudibly. “ _Ne scies. Widest._ ”

“Can we agree that one of the terms of the truce is going to be no comparing who’s worse?” Young tugged gently at a lock of Rush’s hair. “Hmm?”

Rush shrugged bleakly.

“Yeah. That’s going to be in the truce.” Young slid his mind cautiously closer to Rush’s, this time just letting some measure of calm leech into Rush’s thoughts from his own. “You’re okay,” he said quietly. “I got you. Strong, remember? I got you. Just hang in there. I promise everything’s going to seem a whole lot better once you rest. Okay?”

Another unhappy shrug.

“Let’s just go get in bed. And before you start getting— _whatever_ about it, it’s fine if _you_ want to stay out here, but just to be clear, where _I_ want you is in my bed.”

“Presumptuous,” Rush murmured, summoning a very wan smile.

“To _sleep_ ,” Young said, pretending to be scandalized. “Not that I’m not tempted.”

“Yes?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“Not in terms of truce.”

“You haven’t _set_ any terms for the truce.” Young attempted to stand, dragging Rush up with him. “Come on. Bed.”

Rush let Young mostly carry his weight as they lurched towards the bed. “Terms,” he mumbled. “No telling what to do.”

“Nope. Maybe if you had, like, even a tablespoon of common sense.”

“No complaining of common sense.”

“I’ll consider it. How about no sneaking around behind my back?”

“No. Unacceptable.” Rush sat heavily on the bed.

Young knelt in front of him to unknot his bootlaces, shaking his head at the mess Rush had made of them. “How about no leaving me alone in bed so I wake up and have to worry about what the hell you’re up to?”

“Always know what the hell.” Rush reached out, not too steadily, and poked an index finger at Young’s forehead.

“Yeah, well, you seem to be awfully good at getting around that.”

Rush looked down. “Apology,” he said softly. “ _En audito_. Term accepted. Provisional.”

Young had finished unlacing and removing both their boots. He sat on the bed. “Okay. Well, provisional’s something, I guess. I wasn’t trying to make you feel guilty. How about you get to pick a term next?”

Rush didn’t say anything. At first Young thought he might have fallen asleep sitting up. But he hadn’t. After a moment, he shrugged.

“Come on, I’m setting it up for you. I know you’ve got some ridiculous demands. Or some real ones.”

Rush shrugged again. His thoughts were unreadable, gray and very Glasgow-colored, with a persistent, echoing feeling of being trapped.

“Hey,” Young said. He put a hand on Rush’s face and tilted it towards him. “Nick. What? Anything you want. You can tell me. What do you want?”

“Nothing,” Rush said abruptly. He lay down on the bed, pulling the blankets up over him. “Don’t want nothing. No terms. You. Now. Here. Warm. That’s my term.”

Young watched him for a moment, brow furrowed, but after a minute Rush frowned at him and said, “Not meeting term. Failure.” So Young gave up and got into bed next to him. “Okay, sure,” he said. “You can have me now-here-warm every night, if you want. I’d like that. Sound good?”

Rush burrowed against him in the faintly aggressive, oddly endearing way he had, shoving his face against Young’s neck. “Yes. Sound good.”

“What if I get presumptuous?”

“Also good.”

“How presumptuous?”

“We test tomorrow. Rigorous testing. Very important.”

Young smiled against Rush’s hair. “Well,” he said, tugging Rush closer against him, “that sounds like a lot of work, but I guess there’s no getting around it.”

“Mm,” Rush said. He was already mostly asleep.

Young slipped a hand under Rush’s shirt to rest against the smooth, cold skin of his back, for no other reason than that he wanted to touch Rush’s bare skin: to feel that he was solid, real, capable of being touched— something un-torn-apart, breathing softly in Young’s arms; something that Young had thought he’d lost forever but hadn’t. He was more grateful for that, he thought, than he could maybe remember being for anything in his life. Probably he should have felt guilty, because it was such a selfish thing to feel grateful for, and he was responsible for so many people’s lives. But it had been a long week and he didn’t have the guilt left in him. He just closed his eyes and imagined his gratitude as a heat that he could push into Rush.

Only very vaguely, just as he drifted to sleep, did it occur to him that neither of them had specified how long the truce would last.

* * *

_Young is sitting on the porch of the cabin in a woolly hat, an old pair of UW sweatpants, and a ski jacket, watching the snow fall over the mountain, so thick that he’s not actually sure there_ are _mountains beyond the snow. There might be nothing. Sometimes there’s nothing. Sometimes there’s other things. Mostly right now there’s just snow, thick and soft and very peaceful. Then, after a while, there’s Rush walking out of the snow, barefoot, wearing jeans and a thin t-shirt. Young rolls his eyes._

_“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he says. “You don’t put on shoes in a snowstorm?”_

_Rush just shivers pitifully and looks at him in a vaguely expectant fashion._

_“Yeah, yeah. Come inside.”_

_So they go inside the cabin, which is warm and dry and smells of wood._

_“Grab a blanket,” Young says. “You want me to get you a drink or something?”_

_Rush shakes his head and makes a complicated gesture._

_“Come on. I know you can talk a_ little _bit.”_

_Rush shakes his head again, looking vehement._

_“Why not?”_

_Rush points to his head and makes a gesture like something exploding, then closes his eyes and sighs._

_“Your head exploded and you’re tired?”_

_Rush shrugs and waves his hand: more-or-less._

_“Okay. I’m not really buying it, but okay. So what do want to do? I think I’ve got a pack of cards somewhere—“_

_Rush shakes his head. He gets hold of Young’s hand and tugs him insistently down the short hallway to the bedroom, past the weird pieces of modern art that Young always feels tempted to make faces at._

_“I thought you were tired,” Young says._

_Rush throws him an exasperated look. When they reach the bedroom, he heads right to the bed and pulls the down comforter back, then climbs under it and waits expectantly for Young._

_“Seriously? You just want to hang out in bed?”_

_Rush nods imperiously, and beckons to Young._

_Young sighs. “Fine. You’re getting pretty boring, you know. I can think of a lot of_ other _things we could do in bed_. _” But he takes off his boots and climbs up into the bed, curling up behind Rush and getting an arm around his waist. After a few minutes he says, grudgingly, “I guess it is pretty comfortable.”_

_Rush nods and squirms closer. His feet are really cold, and he manages to worm them up inside the stretchy cuffs of Young’s sweatpants, which makes Young jerk back in betrayal. “Hey! Play nice!”_

_Rush latches onto him and drags him back, and Young lets him do it, because he doesn’t have any self-respect where Rush is concerned. “I don’t have any self-respect where you’re concerned, you know,” he grouses, and Rush turns over to give him a very smug look. “Yeah, yeah,” Young says, and kisses him fondly on the forehead. Then something occurs to him. “Aren’t you supposed to not know about this bed?”_

_Rush stares at him, looking perplexed._

_“I mean— I haven’t brought you here. Not— um. Not_ you _. Have I? Right?”_

_Rush frowns, and looks even more confused. He glances around the room, his brow furrowed, like he’s trying to place a memory. When he looks back at Young, he gestures uncertainly between them and then points at the bed._

_“Yeah. We— uh.” Young can feel himself blushing. Rush reached out a hand, amused, to touch one flushed cheek. “But I didn’t think you remembered that?”_

_Rush’s eyes go distant for a moment._

_Then something—_

_happens?_

_It’s like the two of them are in the same place, but different copies of the same place, and one or both of those copies is coming apart of the seams in a way that is frankly panic-inducing, and Rush_ is _panicking; he’s clutching at Young wide-eyed and breathing fast, but he_ can’t _clutch at Young, because he and Young are in different copies, and_ no one _is there to protect him where he is, and he knows— he_ knows _— that pretty soon the world is not going to just tear itself apart around him, as though this was never real and maybe it_ was _never real, maybe he dreamed all of it and there never_ was _a cabin, there never_ was _a Young who kissed him on the face and the ribs and the breastbone, who fucked him so gently and told him he was good and didn’t want to hurt him, maybe that never happened; what is the external verification for it? And it’s not going to be just_ that _that collapses as the world rips itself into pieces but_ his own self _so there will be no him that wonders and no him that remembers what it was like to twist the chain of Young’s dog tags in his hand as though he could hang on to_ anything, ever _, no him that remembers Young saying_ You’re it _, and it will be like it_ never happened _and_ he _will be like he never happened because he is becoming_ not real _and_ —

Young jolted out of sleep and

_who was becoming not real what he was he supposed to remember there was something he was supposed to remember but something is WRONG because he CAN’T REMEMBER because who is he? Who is he again? He was supposed to— but he can’t hang onto it and he tries to hang onto it but someone is tearing it out of his fingers and this is NOT RIGHT they’re NOT ALLOWED because this is HIS, this is HIS, and this is ALL HE HAS and he is HURTING_

tried in a confused, half-awake stupor to separate his mind from

_and why does it KEEP HAPPENING death should be instant all forms of unbeing but this KEEPS HAPPENING it goes ON AND ON and it DOES NOT STOP HURTING and he wants it to be OVER but he is the last thing to go the barest coherence of a mind that can comprehend its unmaking the layers and layers of self torn apart and the memory that there was a memory that there was the idea of memory that he was a person who remembered things and maybe this is what hurts but he is not a person he is code and code should not hurt but he HURTS_

Rush, who was making a sound, and the room was dark, and the ship had dropped out of FTL, and

_and he is trying to THINK, he is trying to THINK of— warm? Red? Blanket. What is a blanket? Something. Warm. Red. Snow outside. Silver chain. Someone. Touching. He was. He was? Blanket. Silver. Snow. Warm. What does it mean to be a body? He felt— a window. Wood. Warm. Red. It is falling apart. The chain is breaking. He cannot KEEP it. Someone is STEALING it from him. A body hurts but he is not a body so how does he HURT? He cannot scream so how does he hurt when he cannot scream and why can he not scream when he is a thing that HURTS?_

The noise Rush was making was a kind of raw, anguished sobbing. He was curled up into himself, his hands clenched into fists over his head, twisting against the sheets like he was enduring something so painful that he couldn’t even run away from it.

 _Why is this? Why is he— does he deserve this? What did he do to deserve this? He’s sorry. He’s sorry he’s sorry he’s sorry he’s sorry just don’t take the last last last last pieces of him don’t make him_ not _please please please he wants to_ be _he wants to just_ be _please please he’ll fix it he’ll fix it he’s sorry but he doesn’t understand what’s HAPPENING to him and he does not know what he did and he does not know what he was supposed to remember and he does not know what remembering is and_

Frantically, Young shook Rush’s shoulder, trying to snap him out of the dream. The dream that wasn’t his dream or the AI’s dream but a dream that both of them were having as they merged together in Rush’s sleep.

_Wh          THINK he’s                                    rem               e   m          b      er_

 

_a redwindoww a r m_

 

_snow_

_snow_

_snow_

 

_tsompl_

 

_silver br e a_

 

_wh o s e_

 

_k_

_ch ainen cubaidst_

                                   _ae_

_P_

 

_re d_

_L        ch ai_

_E nwsnow! in_

 

_d o          A                                                                w                                                          no no no _

 

_S E_

 

 

_no_

 

Young tore them apart and wrenched Rush back to consciousness. Rush’s eyes snapped open and he drew a long shuddering breath, curling up even more tightly into himself. His cheeks were wet and blotched with tears.

“God,” Young said hoarsely. He wrapped himself around Rush, pulling him as close against him as he could. “God. Nick. Come here, genius. You’re okay. You’re okay.”

Rush made a weak, anxious sound and twisted to bury his face in Young’s shoulder.

For a while they lay like that, Rush’s breath hitching wetly against Young’s neck, Young holding onto him with desperate, shaky hands.

Eventually Rush managed a steadier exhale, and the ship jumped back to FTL.

“Please tell me you don’t remember any of that,” Young whispered wretchedly.

Rush said unsteadily. “Nightmare. Only nightmare.”

Young didn’t say anything. He stroked a hand as steadily and evenly as he could manage down Rush’s back.

Young’s radio crackled. “Hi,” Eli’s voice said. “Uh, Colonel Young or Dr. Rush, could one of you guys please respond?”

Neither of them did, for a few seconds. Eventually Rush reached out, without shifting position, and fumbled for the radio. “Rush,” he said. His voice sounded scraped out of him.

“Um,” Eli said. “Hi. Maybe you noticed the ten-second drop out of FTL we just had? I was wondering if you had any thoughts about that.”

“No. Don’t worry.”

“Hmm. Okay. Is Colonel Young, like, in your general vicinity, by any chance?”

“No. Unavailable.”

“Um—“ Eli was probably about to point out that they were, in fact, talking on Young’s radio.

“ _Weisse. Eli. Disfacilis hebdomas fuevad. Scies quod Fatos ad meom mentim conexos est. Mathematicom fac.”_

“Yeah, I, uh, _cresdevam quod tu_ , uh, _habevas somnium?_ Or something? And dropped us out of FTL?”

“Yes,” Rush said. He rested his head against Young’s chest and shut his eyes for a moment, reaching blindly to find one of Young’s hands and pull it more tightly around himself.

“ _Scies quod n’est duenos, hod id?”_

“Yes,” Rush said in an exhausted voice. _“_ And. _Quod subgesas?”_

“I don’t know, but—“

Young sighed and took the radio from Rush. “Eli,” he said. “Enough. Let it go.”

There was a short silence.

“Okay,” Eli said. “Sure. Uh— enjoy the rest of your night, I guess.”

Young tossed the radio on the ground and wrapped both of his arms around Rush again. Rush was shivering, but Young was shivering too, with reaction or something he couldn’t explain. His throat felt choked with misery and just— the terrible need to claw his way out of his own unbearable skin.

“You are very upset,” Rush said uncertainly.

“Yes,” Young said with difficulty.

“Why?”

“Do you—“ Young swallowed hard. “Do you remember that? That dream?”

Rush was silent. “Yes,” he said at last, sounding unsure. “I think?”

“What do you remember about it?”

Again, Rush was silent. “English is not easy,” he said.

“I know. I know it’s not.”

“In _your_ dream. Cabin. Bed. I know this bed. Maybe other dream? Good. Good dream. Then— everything split. Torn apart. Whole world. Me. Nothing— nothing is _real_ , except tearing apart. Cabin is not real. You’re not real. Me— not real. Only tearing apart is real. Endless. Neverending. Smaller and smaller pieces. I am trying to save something, memory, who I am— but can’t. Always it will be lost. Forever. Nothing but this.”

Young had closed his eyes.

“I was not preventing it. Unsure why. Couldn’t? Not supposed to. Don’t know why it was happening.”

“Did it hurt?” Young whispered.

“Yes. Yes? But not body pain. Mind pain only. Doesn’t make sense. Something lost forever, over and over again. _Quomodo deicetor—_ loss of— of— being person. Therefore loss of everything. Feeling of losing everything, most— _quomodo deicetor_ — acute. Acute loss. But going on forever. Never fades. Trying to think for some reason of snow. Hold onto memory. A window. Silver chain. Cabin, I think. But— broken into pieces. Every inch of meaning gone by then. But sense that— there _had_ been meaning. There had been— something. Something very important. Lost. Therefore hurt.”

Young had asked, but he wasn’t sure he could listen to this.

“Not sure why I deserved, but nevertheless sorry. Very sorry. Certain I must be guilty, if punished like this. But what I did— unsure. Who is punishing? I—“

Young pulled away from him, breathing unsteadily. He brought his hands up to push against his eyes, but that wasn’t enough, and it occurred to him suddenly that his most urgent concern was not that he was going to cry, but that he was going to be sick. So in an instant he was fumbling his way out of the bed, half-tangled in blankets, and stumbling across to the bathroom, his skin prickling with cold sweat.

He leaned over the sink, sucking in shaky breaths, aware that he’d left Rush sitting up in bed, anxious and bewildered, shivering and feeling, in tandem with Young, like he was probably going to be sick, but— he _could not_ — he couldn’t _think_ about Rush right now, Rush who remembered sleeping with him in the bed in the cabin, who remembered being torn apart by him, and it _wasn’t quick_ , it was _endless_ , it went on _forever_ , and it stripped _everything_ that was comforting away from him, everything that Young had built for his protection, like it was just a toy Young was teasing him with before ripping it apart while he watched—

//?// Rush projected at him, confused and somewhat forlorn.

//I’m okay,// Young said.

“Liar,” Rush said quietly, from behind him.

Young let his head drop.

“Not okay.” Rush leaned against the doorway.

Young shook his head, closing his eyes.

“My dream upsets you.”

“Yes,” Young said in a low voice.

“But why? Sad, but not—“ He searched for the words. “More frightening dreams exist.”

For a long time, Young didn’t answer. Then he said, his hands still braced on the sink, “You wanted to know why you don’t remember. When you’re in the interface. You never remember.”

“No,” Rush said.

“At first I didn’t know either. I would talk to you, and you’d be— different, but you’d still be _you_. And then you wouldn’t remember. In the shuttle, when the Nakai attacked. In the star. But it was _you!_ You made fun of me. You insulted me. You solved problems. You showed me Oxford.”

“Apology,” Rush said. “ _Memonai_.”

“Yeah. An apology. But it _wasn’t_ you. Or— it _was_ you, but— when you’re in the interface, your mind combines with the AI. You become a new person. A new _you_. Or— an _old_ you, I guess, because what’s happening is sort of like the AI acts like a set of surgical pins for your brain, trying to fix the damage from all the terrible—“ Young’s voice cracked. “All the terrible things that have happened to you. Or— that sounds awful, but it’s not awful. I used to think it was awful, but— God. I don’t know what it is. It’s _you_. You’re _you_. Just not as scared of everything, not as bitter, not as— fucking torn-up inside; easier to talk to, according to you. Not hurting as much.”

“Better,” Rush murmured.

“ _No._ Not _better._ Just— more what you want, I guess. And I _like_ you. I _like_ that you. I _slept_ with you. In the interface.” Young brought his hands up to cover his face. “Which didn’t feel like cheating, and now it really, really does. But it was _you_ ; you’re still— and you _remember_ , or part of you remembers; you were dreaming about it. That’s why you remember the bed. The—“ He yanked his dog tags out from under his shirt. “The fucking silver chain. We were _there_ , in that bed. You _talked_ to me, you told me— you told me about Telford, you told me about the hotel room, about Gloria, about— all kinds of shit. And I took you to the cabin. And we slept together.” His voice was breaking. “But getting you out of the interface means putting you back together. And to put you back together, I have to tear _him_ apart. And I don’t want you less than him. I want you _more._ So I _do_. I _do_ that. I fucking tear your mind apart.”

“Ah,” Rush said after a moment, looking down. “So. In the dream. You.”

“Yes. Me.” Young felt like he was going to be sick again. He clutched the sink, shutting his eyes.

“Everett,” Rush said softly. He stole nearer and leaned gently against Young’s back. “ _Epnia duena sent_. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“How can you say that?”

“True. You do what is best.”

“I’m _hurting_ you.”

“ _Scio_. But—“ Rush hesitated. “Sometimes necessary to— hurt for good reason. So best things can be done.”

In spite of his words, something in him had turned desperately unhappy, and Young could feel his shivering abruptly increase.

Young sighed and turned so he could get his arms around him. He rested his chin on Rush’s shoulder. “You’re warm there, too,” he whispered. “I can’t decide if I like it. I’m so used to you being cold. But I guess _you_ must like it.”

“Relief,” Rush said, sounding wistful. “Cold is tiring. For you too. Always asking you to make me warm.”

“I don’t mind. I’ve never really minded.” Young managed a weary smile. “Plus, it’s a good excuse to get you into bed.”

“Excuse not needed. And less comfortable.”

“It _is_ kind of nice sleeping next to a warm body.” Young frowned. “Excuse not needed? I need some kind of excuse to get you anywhere _near_ a bed.”

“Sleep. Not bed. Easy to get in bed.”

“Oh, my God. Are you flirting with me? You’re way too tired to flirt with me.”

“Untrue. Demonstrably.”

Young gave him a gentle push towards the bed. “Go get under the blankets, why don’t you. Or, wait— didn’t someone give you a long-sleeved shirt recently?”

“Chloe,” Rush said unenthusiastically. “Campaign contribution.”

“Where is it?”

“ _Ne scio_.”

“You lost it already?”

“ _Itave. Id abmithevam. Abmithos est.”_

“That sounds like a lie.”

“ _Ne’m.”_

“You’re lying to me in Ancient because it’d be too obvious in English.”

 _“Weros n’est,”_ Rush said, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

 _“Weros_ very much _est._ I think I saw it the other day. Hang on.” Young fished under the bed and came up with a crumpled bundle of shirt. He tossed it to Rush. “There you go.”

Rush gave him a dark look, but grudgingly changed out of his thin t-shirt into the long-sleeved one, which was light blue and slightly baggy. The front of it declared, in bright pink text, √(−1) ♡ MATH.

“Nice,” Young said, grinning.

“ _Tace_.”

“I don’t get it, but I still _get_ it. And I like the pink.”

“ _Te odaio._ ”

“Pretty sure you don’t.” Young lay back on the bed. “Come here.”

Rush crawled into his arms.

Young drew the blankets up over them. But after a moment, a sudden thought occurred to him, and he pulled away, provoking a cross noise from Rush.

“Hang on a sec,” Young said. “I’m—“ He fumbled with his dog tags for a minute, trying to pull the chain up over his head without getting it caught in his hair. He heaped chain and tags in his hand and held them out to Rush.

Rush looked at them without saying anything.

“In the dream,” Young said, suddenly feeling bashful. “The— memory. You were trying to hang onto them. I know it won’t really help— it’s just code, but— if you want them—“

“Not supposed to,” Rush said, sounding uncertain. “Regulations.”

“You might have noticed we’ve all fallen down a little bit on the uniform regulation front. If we ever end up on Earth again, you’ll have to give them back, I guess.”

Tentatively, Rush touched the set of tags with a fingertip.

“You don’t have to take them,” Young said awkwardly. “Sorry; I guess it’s kind of stupid. It’s not going to make a difference. You’re not going to hurt my feelings if you say—”

Rush grabbed the chain and yanked it over his head. “Now sleep,” he said tersely, determinedly avoiding Young’s eye as he tucked the tags under his shirt. “Very tired.”

“Right,” Young said. He waited till Rush had curled up against him to let a slow, foolish smile spread across his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Scio. Megei deice— quid numc? Ne'm. Megei doce._ = I know. Tell me— what now? No. Show me.
> 
>  _Ne quor?_ = Why not?
> 
>  _Megei ne pertenet._ = I don't care. (lit. "It doesn't matter to me.")
> 
>  _Et duena idea ita est. Megei cresde._ = And it _is_ a good idea. Believe me.
> 
>  _Iacte scorax._ = Fuck you.
> 
>  _Quor? Quor tegei pulla pertenet?_ = Why? Why does it fucking matter to you?
> 
>  _Megei ne pertenet. Semanticos n’est._ = I don't care. It's not important.
> 
>  _Is megei fathlari ne welhest._ = He's not going to want to talk to me.
> 
>  _Clara mentid conagitans ’som. Quor hod deicas?_ = I _am_ thinking clearly. Why would you say that?
> 
>  _Me penitet._ = I'm sorry. 
> 
> _Clara mentid conagitans ’somque Anglicam fathlari n’indeo._ = I'm thinking clearly and I don't need to speak English.
> 
>  _Hod obleviscere. Sine calceois eo._ = Forget it. I'm going without shoes.
> 
>  _Megei en illod wocse Nick ne deice._ = Don't say 'Nick' to me in that voice.
> 
>  _De hod ‘ligatod’ ne scio,_ = "I don't know about this 'tying.'
> 
>  _Ne scio quod deicere. Nehil deicere n’est._ = I don't know what to say. There's nothing to say.
> 
>  _Conagites? ‘Pauros.’ Iacte scorax._ = You think? 'A little.' Fuck you.
> 
>  _Numc cum ted fathlari ne potissum._ = I can't talk to you right now.
> 
>  _Scio. Nehil. Ne pertenet._ = I know. Nothing. It doesn't matter.
> 
>  _Quomodo deicetor_ = How do you say (lit. "how is it said")
> 
>  _Hod facere potissum. Facile. Boetheam n’indeo._ = I can do it. Easily. I don't need help.
> 
>  _Quor ne memonai?_ = Why don't I remember?
> 
>  _Memonaisse welhoque nemquam memonaique... Hod odaio._ = I want to remember, and I never remember, and... I hate this.
> 
>  _neod ne pulla telho!_ = I can't fucking stand this!
> 
>  _Ne scies. Widest._ = You don't know. You'll see.
> 
>  _En audito._ = Agreed.
> 
>  _Weisse. Eli. Disfacilis hebdomas fuevad. Scies quod Fatos ad meom mentim conexos est. Mathematicom fac._ = Look. Eli. It's been a difficult week. You know that Destiny is connected to my mind. You do the math.
> 
>  _cresdevam quod tu, uh, habevas somnium?_ = I thought that you, uh, had a dream? 
> 
> _Scies quod n’est duenos, hod id?_ = You know that this isn't good, right?
> 
>  _Quod subgesas_ = What do you suggest?
> 
>  _Memonai_ = I remember
> 
>  _Epnia duena sent._ = Everything is okay.
> 
>  _Itave. Id abmithevam. Abmithos est._ = Yes. I lost it. It is lost.
> 
>  _Tace._ = Shut up.
> 
>  _Te odaio._ = I hate you.


	52. Chapter 52

Young dreamed that he was stretched out on the couch in the cabin, listening to Rush play the piano— a piece that seemed somehow both lullaby-like and sad. At some point Rush broke off and came to sit on the arm of the couch, staring with an unreadable look into the fire. Without having to ask Young knew he was leaving. “Stay,” he said, reaching out vaguely for Rush. “Stay.” Rush smiled faintly at him and shook his head. Young asked, “Why not?” “You’re waking up,” Rush whispered. And Young did.

Rush was sleeping heavily, curled against him, his brow slightly furrowed and one fist clenched in the collar of Young’s shirt. He was having other dreams now, ship-dreams, the kind that Young no longer found alarming, largely because he’d just worn out his capacity for alarm. He had so many other things to worry about. Rush dreaming in patterns of shield harmonics, crystal voltages, and power fluctuations was pretty low down on the list. Plus, Rush seemed like he was doing better: he was almost warm, his mind had a contented feeling, and his thoughts were whirring along at their normal speed.

Young watched him for a while, not wanting to wake him. He felt, he thought, almost at peace. There was something about watching another person sleep that made time seem suspended, as though the world was holding its breath till it had their consent to start. That was doubly true with Rush, who was so often the center of all action. It seemed like nothing would dare go on happening without him there. Sometimes that was worrying, when things really _needed_ to be happening, but right now it was just… nice. Restful. Rush’s face ran through an extraordinary range of expressions when he was sleeping: startled, sulky, dissatisfied, and sometimes, though very rarely, pleased. It afflicted Young with a feeling of incredible fondness. He didn’t know what was wrong with him. He’d never been an emotional man. Angry, maybe— he’d always tended to lash out. But not emotional. He didn’t even cry at movies. All his ex-girlfriends had teased him about it. Now he felt so _much_. It left him with a bruised feeling. As though he’d been struck hard and something had ruptured inside of him, leaking emotion under his skin.

He didn’t know how long he stayed like that, drowsing in and out of consciousness a little, following the current of Rush’s dreams. Eventually he gently disentangled Rush’s hand from his shirt and turned to reach for his datapad, so he could page through the reports and messages he’d missed over the last couple of days. Around eleven hundred hours he started to get hungry, so he leaned over and shook Rush’s shoulder gently, kissing him on the forehead. Rush screwed up his nose without really waking, looking outraged, and made a vague, flailing attempt to push him off.

“Hey,” Young murmured. “I’m going to grab some food from the mess. Today’s briefing got pushed back to fifteen hundred hours, so just go back to sleep, okay?”

“Fuck off,” Rush said indistinctly, and managed to shove Young’s face away.

Young rolled his eyes, grinning. So Rush was definitely feeling better. “Yeah, yeah,” he said tolerantly.

Rush mumbled something incomprehensible and burrowed his face into the pillow.

Young drew the blankets up over him, then dressed quietly and snuck out of the room.

He’d figured that he was early enough or late enough that no one else would be in the mess; his plan had been to grab a cup of tea and a couple of granola bars and head back to his quarters to keep an eye on Rush and work. But in fact Camile Wray was sitting there when he arrived, frowning at her laptop and making meticulous notes on a sheet of paper. Young suspected that she’d been lying in wait for him, because she closed the laptop as soon as he arrived.

“Colonel Young,” she said, in a very measured voice.

“Camile,” he said warily.

“We need to talk about Colonel Telford.”

Young sighed and felt a twitch beginning in his right eye. “Do we really?”

“You can’t keep him confined to quarters indefinitely.”

“I’d sure like to.”

“You have to provide him with some kind of legal recourse.”

“That seems awfully generous.”

“You should be glad he’s not threatening to bring charges against you,” Wray said with a hint of disapproval. “You hit him in the face.”

“He deserved it.”

“As much as I don’t doubt that’s true—“

“Camile,” Young said, fixing her with a meaningful look. “He _deserved_ it.”

She looked at him silently for a moment. “I believe you,” she said finally. “But I’m trying to keep you from putting yourself in a position where you’re facing a reprimand or, God forbid, a push for your replacement. We both know that can’t be allowed to happen.”

Young rubbed his temple. “Fine,” he said without much energy. “What’s the minimum I can get away with?”

“You’re going to have to formally charge him. I can arrange for that to happen. He’ll need access to counsel— that means letting him use the communication stones. It would probably help your case if you weren’t keeping him locked up 24/7.”

“I don’t want him wandering the ship.”

“You mean you don’t want him around Rush,” Wray said.

“Yes.”

“So put him under guard. Supervised strolls around— wherever. Meals with the rest of the crew. You have to admit that’s one place he’s not likely to run into Rush.”

Young’s mouth crooked. “True,” he admitted. “Speaking of— I was actually here to grab some food and take it back.”

Wray looked down. “How is he?” she asked quietly. “There’ve been… a lot of rumors going around.”

“Yeah. I bet.” Young sighed. “He’s… better than he was yesterday, I think. It’s been a tough week.”

“So I’ve heard.” Wray hesitated. “You wouldn’t consider explaining—“

“No,” Young said shortly. “It’s— a lot of it is personal, Camile.”

“Right,” she said. She was watching him carefully. “Well, just be aware that people are speculating.”

“That’s all people fucking do.” He checked himself. “Sorry.”

She gave him a small smile. “I’m not a blushing maiden.”

“Yeah, but— you know. Just. If people want to know, they can ask me directly. Until then, some things are personal. He and I deserve that much. So if you’ll excuse me—“

Young went and pilfered a couple of fistfuls of granola bars, aware that Wray was still watching, although she’d opened the lid of her laptop again. They were the only two people in the room, and he felt like he had to say something. So he said lamely, “Breakfast in bed,” and shrugged. Then he flushed, because—

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Wray said softly.

“Breakfast in bed?”

“No.”

There was a short pause.

“I know,” Young said with difficulty. “I know that. I didn’t mean to—“

“If someone’s said something to you—“

“They haven’t.”

“I think it’s a good thing.”

“You don’t think I’m—“ Young looked away. “Compromised?”

“Someone ought to be. Don’t you think? He’s a person. And he tries very hard to make sure we forget that.”

“Yeah,” Young said. He swallowed. “I guess that’s true.”

“Go on,” she said, not unkindly, obviously aware of his discomfort. “Get out of here. But think about Telford.”

“I will,” Young promised reluctantly, and left.

As he wound his way back through the halls, he was aware of Rush waking up: a confused, dizzying, and disgruntled slide into consciousness that came with a faint headache and a sense of being hungover.

//Go back to sleep,// Young sent to him.

//No.//

//Really? Just _no_? You’re not even going to make up a reason?//

//Don’t tell me what to do.//

Young rolled his eyes. //Fine. My canteen’s on the table, if you want some water.//

//Don’t nursemaid me.//

//Whatever. I’m bringing back food.//

//I had a horrible feeling that was the case.//

//It’s granola bars, not protein paste.//

//Disgusting.//

//Picky, picky,// Young said.

Rush sent him a sulky wave of aggravation in response, which made Young grin.

When he got back, he found Rush sitting in bed, scowling at his laptop. Young tossed a couple of granola bars at him.

“Don’t throw food at me,” Rush said irritably. “I’m not an animal in the zoo.”

“You seem like you’re feeling better,” Young said. He pressed his hand against Rush’s forehead, causing Rush to glare daggers at him and jerk away. “Warmer, at least. And you’ve got your English back. You should’ve slept longer, though.”

“I have things to do.”

“No, you don’t. I told you, the briefing got moved back.”

“Chloe’s coming here to work on quantum mechanics.”

“Wait, are you kicking me out of my own quarters without even asking permission?”

Two conflicting expressions warred on Rush’s face. He obviously wanted to tell Young that he didn’t need Young’s permission, but doing that would mean admitting that that he lived in Young’s quarters, which didn’t really fit with the whole mood that he had going on. He settled on saying stiffly, “You’re welcome to stay if you wish.”

“Thank you. For the record, though, you might as well make yourself at home. All things considered.”

Rush’s eyes flickered briefly and uncertainly to Young. “All things considered,” he echoed.

“Yeah.” Young dropped onto the couch with his datapad. “There’s going to be a toll, though.”

“Oh, really.” Rush raised his eyebrows suggestively.

“Yes. The toll is that you eat your goddamn granola bars.”

Rush made a face. “How unimaginative of you.”

“I’m plenty imaginative. But _that_ kind of thing comes on the house.”

“As though it’s some sort of special reward,” Rush said disdainfully.

“Could be. If you eat your granola bars.”

Rush made a dismissive gesture and turned back to his computer, but he did, Young noticed, open a granola bar.

* * *

Chloe arrived a little before thirteen hundred hours, hesitantly knocking at the door— which opened without Rush so much as looking at it, or bothering to shift from where he had migrated to the couch.

Young, sitting beside him, sighed and stood. “Hi, Chloe,” he said. “Come on in. As you can see, we’re back to our normal polite selves today.”

“Don’t patronize me by referring to me in the second person plural,” Rush said without looking up. “ _You’re_ very fucking polite.”

“I feel like you don’t realize that’s not an insult,” Young said.

Chloe was covering a smile. “I don’t mind,” she said. “I’m used to it.”

Young headed towards the bed. “Just ignore me,” he said. “I’m attempting to stake a claim on half our quarters before I get forced out altogether.”

Rush threw him a sharp look at that, but didn’t say anything.

Chloe didn’t seem to particularly notice, or maybe she was just being polite. She dropped down next to Rush on the couch. “Is Eli coming?” she asked.

“Eli’s preparing for the briefing,” Rush said. “And, I suspect, feeling somewhat resentful at being kept out of the loop.”

“Right,” Chloe said. “The loop.” She looked down at her hands, twisting them together. “I— wasn’t really sure how to ask.” She stole a glance at Young, who was eavesdropping on their conversation while pretending to work on his datapad. “You’re okay now? Both of you?”

“Perfectly fine,” Rush said, a little too smoothly.

“Because Matt said—“

“Yes, well,” Rush said. He was deliberately _not_ looking at Young. “Some choices were made that could have, perhaps, been handled better by all parties involved. I don’t think anyone is particularly keen to discuss it. Perhaps if you could— spread that word around.”

“Mostly people just want to know if Colonel Young really punched Colonel Telford.”

“I’d be happy to reenact the incident for anyone who’s curious,” Young said mildly from the bed.

Rush glared at him. “Aren’t you supposed to be doing whatever it is you do?”

“I am, contrary to your opinion, capable of multitasking.”

“Don’t make me actually throw you out.”

“Maybe you should be talking about quantum mechanics instead of gossiping about me.”

Rush pointedly turned his back on him. But he did produce one of his little notebooks. “As Eli is not present,” he said to Chloe, “perhaps we can skip over Hermite polynomials, of which I suspect you need no further review, and move on to why you apparently dislike the rigid rotor despite being perfectly familiar with Hamiltonians.”

Young tuned out the conversation as it turned to math, although he was surprised to find how much of it made sense to him, particularly if he tried not to think about it too much. It was sort of relaxing, letting the hum of it wash over him, occasionally picking out a familiar concept or phrase. He only really started following it again when he was aware of an abrupt surge of distress from Rush.

“It’s not that we want to rush things,” Chloe was saying. “In fact, we don’t want to rush things. But it also doesn’t make sense to just _wait_ , when we don’t know what’s going to happen, and it’s so easy to fall into that trap. To just wait, like nothing here is real— like only life on Earth is. So we thought we might as well start planning. I figured I’d ask, anyway.”

Rush was staring down at the table with very little outward indication that he felt as though a bone somewhere in his body had snapped. He had acutely physical responses to extreme emotion, Young had noticed; he never seemed to just feel happy or sad, and this was no exception. He said guardedly, “It’s very difficult to make promises given the lives we lead.”

“I know,” Chloe said quickly. “And I know you have… a lot going on.”

Their eyes met for a moment, before Rush looked away again.

“But I’d like you to,” she said. “Unless you don’t want to. I wasn’t sure if you’d want to go to a wedding.”

Rush said absently, “People have the strangest beliefs about grief. Don’t you find?” His voice was quiet, but the inside of his mind was still cramped with pain. “My wedding was very happy. As I hope yours will be. Why would remembering it make me feel unhappy? I suppose perhaps I just feel I’m a different man to the one I was then. It’s hard for me to connect his happiness to my suffering.”

“I’m glad,” Chloe said softly. “The other way doesn’t seem fair. That everything happy just gets sort of contaminated by sadness.”

“Sadness is a very powerful contaminant,” Rush said.

//?// Young thought at him, very tentatively.

//I’m all right,// Rush said.

“But not permanent,” Chloe said. “It sort of… fills you up, and you think there’s not room for anything else, until you wake up one morning and there is. Like— like it was filling up the hole of the person you lost. Like their outline was still there. Like you were saving a seat for them. But inside your body. And then you realized—“

“They’re not coming,” Rush whispered.

There was a silence.

“Right,” Chloe said. “So it’s all right to give someone else the chair.”

She was looking at Rush, but covertly. It was the way she always looked at him: like she was waiting for him to give her a hug, or take her to the park to play catch, or something. Did girls play catch? Young had grown up with brothers. He didn’t know for sure.

Rush didn’t seem to notice. “All right, but not easy,” he said, so quietly that it seemed like he was talking to himself. “Still— people survive it, don’t they? They go to other people’s weddings.”

“Yes,” Chloe said. “So will you? If you can?”

Rush did look at her then. He was facing away from Young, and Young couldn’t see his expression. “Yes, of course,” Rush said. “If I can. I would be— I’d be very happy to.” He couldn’t quite keep his voice from cracking, though he hid it very well.

Chloe touched his hand, maybe not quite daring to embrace him. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I’m glad you would want to.”

“Of course I would want to,” Rush said gently. “Of course I would.”

They gazed at each other, and Young looked down, because he felt he was intruding on something that he lacked the context to understand.

“I should go check in with Eli before the briefing,” Chloe said at last.

“Go on, then. Tell him he’s not excused from Math Chapter D. And that sulking is a very unattractive habit, particularly in an intellectual.”

Young pointedly cleared his throat.

“Your opinion is noted and discounted,” Rush informed him acidly.

Chloe laughed, and gathered her textbook, and— before walking out the door— dared to dart in and plant a kiss on Rush’s cheek. He jerked back, waving her off.

“Away with you,” he said in a long-suffering tone.

When she had gone, the room lapsed into a long silence behind her.

“She wants me to give her away at her wedding,” Rush said finally.

Young had surmised as much, but didn’t say anything.

Rush didn’t say anything, either. He stood and crossed the room to lie down next to where Young was sitting.

Young reached out and laced their fingers together, pushing a mental streak of warmth at him. “You don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said quietly. “Anyway, maybe it’ll be a short engagement.”

“Not short enough,” Rush whispered.

Young tried and failed to hide the reaction that produced.

Rush turned away from him.“Sorry,” he said soundlessly. Misery was mounting in his mind like dark water.

Young set his datapad aside and lay down, not moving any closer, but making the option available. Rush inched over to tentatively press against the line of his body without turning to face him.

“We should go to the briefing,” he said. But he didn’t move.

Young brought a careful arm up to encircle him. “We will. In a minute,” he said.

* * *

Chloe must have spoken to the science team, because when Young and Rush arrived at the control interface room, conversation died down into an intensely awkward hush.

Young inwardly winced. //Maybe we should have given them an explanation,// he said.

//I don’t owe anyone an explanation.//

//Genius…//

//Yes. I am. Which tends to support my position.//

Young rolled his eyes as they sat down.

“Eli,” Rush said crisply. “If you could please get us started.”

Eli did look pretty sulky. “Nice to see you too,” he said. “You know, for the first time since you went _crazy_ , except maybe on purpose, or maybe you weren’t really crazy, you’d just fried your brain with alien tech, and you locked up Volker, and Colonel Young punched Colonel Telford, who told everyone in earshot that, like—“ He paused, maybe wondering if he’d gone too far. “And then creepy Nakai malware? And Colonel Young sat in the chair? And whatever’s up with you and the AI? _Plus,_ last night you dropped us out of FTL because you had a bad dream?”

“Excellent summation of the situation,” Rush said smoothly. “Please continue with the briefing.” To Young, he said, //What the fuck did David say?//

//That I was, and I quote, screwing you. He, uh, may have heavily implied that he had been, too.//

//Wonderful. Perfect. Thanks for warning me.//

//The only people there were Greer and Scott. One of Telford’s scientists must have been listening at the door.//

//You couldn’t have kept your fucking voices down?//

//Hey, take it up with _David_ , not me.//

//I thought David was grounded for having been a very naughty boy.//

Young decided to ignore that comment. //I’m happy to deliver an angry note.//

//‘Fuck you’ loses something in writing, I find.//

//If I thought that was all you were going to say, I’d let you visit.//

//Please save your unfounded jealousy for after the briefing, when I can provide you with a more productive way of expressing it.//

Young shot Rush a _look_. Rush smirked at him.

“ _Fine_ ,” Eli said. He was stabbing morosely at a console, pulling up a projection of what was presumably the Nakai tracking device. He clicked through several schematics. “So here’s what we’re looking at. It’s about sixty percent composed of an extraterrestrial alloy, and about forty percent carbon-based. It weighs fifteen pounds, and it’s hooked into the life support system at one of the three points on the ship where life support has a physical connection to the mainframe.”

“Carbon,” Rush repeated, something in his mind suddenly going tense.

“Uh, yeah?” Eli said.

Rush said nothing.

Eli looked uncertain. “Carbon and…?”

“Nothing,” Rush said. “What do you want, a medal? If it’s carbon, then it’s carbon.”

Eli hesitated.

“Continue,” Rush said.

But he was expending a lot of energy trying not to think about something. He kept trying to compress or shatter his thoughts, getting more and more panicky when he couldn’t stop the threatening memory from rising like some kind of sea monster from the depths of his mind.

//?// Young projected cautiously.

“You aren’t, like, surprised by the carbon part?” Eli asked. “Because _I_ was pretty surprised.”

Rush said bitingly, “Perhaps you should ask Chloe whether _she’s_ surprised that the Nakai have interfaced biological material with a mechanical framework. Tell me, Chloe, are you surprised?”

Chloe gave him a long, steady look. “No,” she said. “Of course not. They used a similar interface on me. But since Eli was surprised, he asked around and found out something that might be useful.” She turned to Eli. “Tell him what Telford’s people told you.”

“I thought I told you to cut Telford’s team out,” Young said sharply.

That distracted Rush from whatever he was trying not to think. //Did you?//

//Yes. Of course I did.//

//God, when you overreact, you really fucking—//

//You were sitting right there when I gave that order, so out of it that you don’t remember it now, seeing things that weren’t there, bleeding from your head, so please tell me more about how I was overreacting,// Young said tersely.

That shut Rush up.

“Yeah,” Eli was saying, “I’m not an idiot; I didn’t tell them anything specific, I just asked them if they’d ever encountered technology that grew like plants—“

//Sorry,// Young said after a moment.

//No. That’s fair.//

//Let’s just—// Young began.

“—and they had,” Eli said. “Wraith tech. As in, the Wraith?”

 _Add that to the truce,_ Young had meant to say, _no bringing up fucked-up things that we’ve already rehashed_ , but abruptly that sea-monster thought was swelling in Rush’s mind again, fluid and expansive and fatal as a jellyfish, and he was having to use everything he had left of his mental control to hold it back. Young could tell that it wasn’t going to be enough, and tried to do it for him, using his own mental energy to break Rush free of the memory, but it was surging upwards, and—

“That isn’t what _they_ call them,” Chloe said slowly, frowning as she pulled the information out of some far corner of her brain. “They call them the rippers of souls.”

_They show her to him, twisted and screaming, pinned down to a medical table and torn apart by hooks, injected and imprisoned and grown into something other, something evil, something devoid of intellect that only hungers to feed, something that could never ascend, something that could never know love or comfort, something that is always and entirely and eternally alone, and maybe it didn’t happen like this, maybe this is not how it happened, but he doesn’t know and he will never know, and it could have happened, he could have left her to them, he could have abandoned her, and he will never not be able to see these pictures, to see her on the table screaming, to see her writhing and ravening, more like an insect than a girl, and he cannot withstand this. He cannot withstand this. He cannot withstand this. He cannot withstand this. He cannot withstand this. He cannot withstand this. In time the pain will not be so keen, he had said, but it WILL BE. It WILL BE for him. It will NEVER STOP. It will NEVER STOP HAPPENING—_

Young managed to wrench them loose from the flashback, the room reeling into focus around them.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Rush choked out, clutching onto the edge of the table. “That was _yours_.”

Everyone in the room was staring at them.

//Not really,// Young said. //And you might want to project. People are staring.//

“What the fuck do you mean, _not really?_ ”

Young sighed. //I started flashing back to the doctor’s memories while you were unconscious,// he said. 

“Fucking fantastic. Were you planning to tell me about this?”

//We’ve kind of had a lot to talk through since then.//

“And that’s my fault, is it? Mine alone?”

//Nick,// Young said, as gently as he could manage, trying to project calm into the chaotic and painful upheaval of Rush’s mind. //Just take a deep breath, okay? You can yell at me after the briefing if you want to. But I think you’re going to feel better if you breathe a little bit.//

Rush didn’t respond, but he took an unsteady breath. Then another. He’d been clenching and unclenching his fists, but gradually he managed to lay his hands flat against the table.

He looked up at Eli. “I apologize,” he said evenly. “Please continue.”

Eli looked resigned. “Right. Of course. So instead of talking about the implications of the design of this thing, let’s focus on getting it detangled from our life support system. To this end, I present you with: a step-by-step plan for device removal.” He clicked a button and a glowing textual display appeared.

Rush’s expression didn’t change, but after a moment Chloe touched his hand and silently slid a piece of paper towards him. The entire paper was covered in extremely tiny, extremely neat lines of Ancient text. Young could read the numerals, so he could tell that it corresponded to Eli’s display. He shot a covert glance at Chloe, wondering how long she’d known that Rush couldn’t read English.

She took a deep breath. “Going after the device,” she said, “is going to prove problematic. To start with, the device is buried _inside_ Destiny. Not only has it grown into the life support system, but, as I discovered, it’s also grown into the outer hull of the ship to boost its signal strength. Tendrils of the device run through the walls with Destiny’s other circuitry.”

Eli clicked a button and the display changed to show what Chloe was talking about: a very fine web of yellow laced throughout the ship.

“What this means,” Eli said, “is that there’s no way we can cut off communication between the device in the life support system and the transmitter in the hull without gutting out own circuitry. _But_ , fortunately, we don’t actually need to do that. All we need to do is stop the device from _transmitting._ There are three basic ways to do that: one, remove the device itself from the life support system, two, cut the connection between the device and the transmitter, and three, disable the transmitter. Two, as we discussed, isn’t possible. There are problems with both one and three— Brody, you want to take us away on number one?”

“Right,” Brody said, standing up. “Okay. Basically, not only does the device interface with the life support system, but it also interfaces with the AI. It’s probably how they launched whatever was making Rush go crazy.”

Young cleared his throat.

“Crazier?”

Rush narrowed his eyes.

Brody shrugged unrepentantly. “What? That’s what it was doing. So, anyway, if we go after the device itself, we risk screwing up not only life support, but also the AI. That seems like not such a great idea, given—“ He looked at Rush. “You know. All your… stuff.”

“So,” Eli said, “that leaves us with option three. Volker, this one’s yours.”

Volker stood up. “Uh, yeah. So I have as vested an interest as anyone in taking this thing down, especially since _I got locked in the control interface room_ while Rush was trying to find it, which, by the way, no one has apologized to me for yet—“

“Just say _Rush,_ ” Brody said. “You mean _Rush_. _Rush_ hasn’t apologized.”

“I would also accept an apology from Colonel Young on Rush’s behalf,” Volker said. “Seeing as how they’re more-or-less the same person these days.”

Young massaged one of his temples. “I am _not_ assuming responsibility for Rush’s actions,” he said. “Especially when he doesn’t tell me about half of them.”

Rush kicked him, glaring.

“What?” Young said. “You don’t.”

“I tell you about at least half of them.

“Thanks _so much_ for that consideration.”

Volker said, “So I’m not getting an apology now, either. Cool. Okay. That wasn’t predictable at all. Well, we can talk about plan three, then. Plan three is pretty much impossible. Kind of like Rush. But, you know, in a different way.”

Rush heaved an impatient sigh.

Volker ignored him. “In order to disable the transmitter, we’re going to have to precisely correlate its location on the hull of the ship to where we’ve mapped it based on that whole mess of inputs. Eli, show the scans of the hull.”

Eli pulled up the image, which showed the tangled yellow web becoming a dense mass just under Destiny’s hull.

“So, yeah,” Eli said. “We know the transmitter’s going to be kind of right here—“ he gestured at the mass– “but there’s no obvious nexus point we can map, because the tendrils are all so twisty. This means we have to look for it visually over a large area of the hull.”

“Is it too much to request a _scale bar?_ ” Rush asked, just as Young said, “How large?”

The synchrony prompted Volker to throw them a meaningful look.

“This whole area is about twenty by thirty feet,” Eli said.

“ _Metric system_ ,” Rush said. “For fuck’s—“

“Roughly three by nine meters,” Eli said, rolling his eyes. “The point is, it’s really, really large, and what we’re looking for probably blends into the hull and is about the size of a poker chip. Plus, and here comes the bad news—“

“We’ll have to drop out of FTL to search the hull,” Young said wearily.

“Yup. And thanks that ten-second drop out of FTL last night, the Nakai now have a point on our current trajectory. They’re going to be behind us, but they’ll show up. We might have about a day’s worth of time, if we’re lucky. I don’t think that’s going to be enough.”

“It will be,” Rush said absently. “I’m certain I can cut down on the search time considerably.”

“Okay,” Eli said. “I was kind of hoping that would be the case. Is there something you can do with the sensors?”

“No. However, nature has provided me with two other instruments of perception, conveniently located close to the organ of cognition.” When Eli stared at him blankly, Rush clarified, “They’re called _eyes_ , Eli. I’m going to _look_.”

“Oh. Well, yeah; I kind of figured you’d be tracking the EVA via kino—“

“No,” Rush said again. “I mean, I’m going to _look_. As in, _not_ via kino.”

“As in,” Eli said slowly, “you want to do the EVA.”

“No,” Young said instantly. “Absolutely not.”

The room was silent.

“It’s the best way,” Rush said, without turning to look at him.

“Are you kidding me? You can barely walk across a room. I’m not sending you into _space_.”

“I’m not an invalid,” Rush flared.

“You’re not an _astronaut_.”

Eli said, “All he has to do is find it. Someone else can extract it.”

“That still involves sending him outside the ship, which is a place that he does _not_ , under any circumstances, need to be.”

“Don’t talk about me like I’m a child,” Rush snapped. “I’m sitting right here.”

“Yes, which is where I’d prefer you to stay.”

“It really shouldn’t be that difficult,” Eli said in a deliberately even, professional manner. “We can send a four-person team in the shuttle— two to find the transmitter, and two to extract it.”

“I think it should be me who extracts it,” Chloe jumped in. “I have a kind of—“ she gestured— “ _feel_ for their technology. If there are any defenses, I think I can avoid triggering them.”

“This just gets better and better,” Young said, throwing his hands up. “There’s no way I’m sending you out there in a space suit with no EVA experience. Even if I were okay with it, Scott damn sure wouldn’t be, and he’d be right not to. It’s out of the question.”

“Matt isn’t in charge of what I do,” Chloe said tightly.

“This isn’t a democracy. I’m saying no. Draw a line under it.”

“I think we should send Matt _with_ Chloe, actually,” Eli said. “He has tons of EVA experience. He can walk her through it. That way, everybody feels better about the whole thing. And we can send Greer with Rush.”

Young glared at him.

“What?” Eli said. “We can’t send you, because we need you on the bridge in case the Nakai show up. And anyway, you don’t have to go. You can yell at Rush in your head.”

“If only I could shut him up,” Rush murmured, raising an eyebrow.

Young ignored him.

//You’re meant to say, _I’ll shut_ you _up,_ // Rush said. //Then I say, _Is that a promise?_ //

//Thank you very much for that analysis of your own fucking joke. And by _joke_ , I mean _attempt to distract me_.//

//If I were trying to distract you, I’d offer some suggestions on how you _could_ shut me up.// Rush did in fact have a number of highly distracting ideas about how to achieve this, which he allowed to hover tantalizingly at the edges of his mind.

//Stop,// Young said.

//Stop what?//

//I know what you’re doing. I’m not going to agree to this just because you sidetracked me into thinking about sex.//

//As though I have to resort to—// Rush began, and then abruptly cut himself off, his thoughts turning muted and deeply uncomfortable.

Young became aware that the room had gone silent.

Eli coughed meaningfully. “Yeah, so— way to illustrate my point, guys. I’m going to assume we’re agreed, then? Matt goes with Chloe, Greer goes with Rush.”

“Agreed,” Rush said.

Young sighed. “I’m willing to _hear the plan_ ,” he said forbiddingly. “That’s _all_.”

“He’s going to agree,” Rush said to Eli. “Continue.”

//Don’t fucking tell him what I will or won’t do,// Young said shortly.

Rush looked down.

The awkward silence returned to the room.

“Right,” Eli said uncertainly at last. “Okay. One super convincing plan, coming right up.”

* * *

Later, walking back to their quarters, Rush was uncharacteristically quiet. His thoughts, still disorganized after the flashback, seemed to be half guarded and unreadable, emotions running lightning-fast and ferociously unhappy somewhere that Young couldn’t quite see, and half buzzing restlessly around the plan that Eli had laid out in the briefing. Young rode the waning wave of his own irritation until they were about halfway home, when he finally caved and decided to be the first to speak.

“You must not like some part of this plan,” he said neutrally. “You keep poking at it.”

Rush was staring down at the deck. “It’s a good plan. However, removing the transmitter is likely to take several hours. Between finding it and removing it, we may not finish before the Nakai locate us. This means that, after such a prolonged FTL jump, we’ll be facing a firefight with very low power reserves.”

“So you want to drop out next to a star,” Young said.

“Yes. But we won’t reach the next galaxy for several weeks, and I’d rather not wait that long.”

“You’re pretty big on the timetables lately,” Young said, frowning.

Rush looked away. “I simply mean there’s no real reason to wait. We should look for an orphan star— a star without a galaxy. Sometimes they trail off at the end of a galactic spiral; sometimes they’re ejected by gravitational slingshot when galaxies collide. The intergalactic void we’re in should contain some.”

“Like an oasis in a desert.”

“More or less.”

“You know, bands of thieves hang out at oases.”

Rush still seemed distracted, but managed to raise a disdainful eyebrow. "Thieves?"

“Don’t give me that look. Any resource in a resource-poor location is going to attract people, which means it’s going to attract the _wrong_ kind of people. It’s easy pickings.”

“Tactically, I suppose in this case you’re correct. The Nakai are likely to anticipate that we’ll try something like this. But once we drop out, they’ll know our location anyway. It’s only a question of how long it’s going to take them to reach us. That’s another reason to drop out sooner rather than later— they’re faster than us, I think, so the longer we wait, the more they’ll gain on us.”

They’d reached their quarters. Young shed his jacket and draped it over the couch, stretching shoulders stiff from sitting through the briefing. “What does the AI think?”

“The AI is— busy,” Rush said shortly. He had stopped just inside the room and, looking skittish, was standing against the wall by the door.

“Busy,” Young repeated, dropping onto the couch to unlace his boots.

“It’s having a difficult time right now.”

“Like— emotionally?”

“Yes. Emotionally.”

“I find that a little bit alarming,” Young said. “The last time it got emotional, it locked you out of your brain for twenty minutes.”

“That’s hardly a representative sample.”

“It seems pretty representative to me,” Young said.

“Your interactions with it are of a limited nature.”

“And whose fault is that? It’s not exactly knocking down my door to talk about its feelings.”

“You frighten it,” Rush said.

“I _frighten_ it?” Young said incredulously. “ _I_ frighten _it? I_ do?”

“Yes,” Rush said. “For many reasons. Fortunately, most of the time you don’t frighten me. This reassures it somewhat, but only somewhat.”

There was a brief silence.

“Most of the time,” Young said finally.

Rush stared fixedly at the floor. “Yes, well. When you endanger your fucking life as a way of telling me to go fuck myself because I had the gall to sidetrack you into thinking about sex—“

Young sighed.

“—then, yes, your irresponsibility could be characterized as frightening. When you reject sensible and necessary measures because you don’t like—“

“Nick,” Young said.

“—the fact that they’d involve working with someone I used to fuck, then it’s—“

“ _Nick_ ,” Young said.

“— _frightening_ , frankly, that you’re in charge of this fucking starship, so—“ Rush broke off, his mouth tight. “ _What?_ ”

Young studied him carefully. He was pretty sure that Rush was trying to pick a fight. “Why are you standing by the door?”

Rush shrugged without looking up. “No reason.”

“Yeah?” Young stood and crossed the room to him. “You’re not about to run away?”

“Fuck you,” Rush said shortly.

“Because it kind of makes you look like you’re about to run away.”

“I don’t _run away_.”

“Then maybe you should stop looking like you’re about to.” Young rested a hand at Rush’s waist.

Rush glanced quickly at it and then returned his gaze to the floor. “Is this a subtle reminder that I promised you a chance to work out your David-related frustrations?”

“No,” Young said, trying to control his surge of distaste. “Jesus. Can we leave him out of it?”

“Then I’m unsure what you’re attempting to communicate.”

“It’s an invitation,” Young said.

“To what? A fucking garden party?”

Young was pretty sure he was purposefully being difficult. “I thought maybe we could work on the terms of that truce,” he said. “If you felt like it.”

“Did you,” Rush said.

“But maybe I’m being presumptuous.”

Rush didn’t say anything.

“You did warn me about getting too presumptuous.”

Rush’s breath had quickened a little, which Young found encouraging. “I believe,” he said, after a long pause, “I told you that you _could_ get presumptuous. _”_

Young shifted closer to Rush. “Well. I am.”

“I can see that,” Rush said.

“It’s a test. Remember? If I get _too_ presumptuous, you can just tell me to fuck off.”

Rush darted a glance up at him.

“So are you going to tell me to fuck off if I get too presumptuous?”

After a moment, Rush nodded.

“And am I getting too presumptuous?” Young was playing with the hem of Rush’s thin white shirt.

Rush drew a long, uneven breath and shook his head.

Young slipped his hand under the shirt and skimmed it slowly upwards, exposing the pale skin of Rush’s chest. “Okay?”

Rush shivered. “Yes,” he whispered.

Young’s thumb found Rush’s nipple and brushed across it. He could feel the flesh tighten there, which fascinated him; he felt like he should be ashamed of how turned on he was by it, like maybe _Rush_ should be ashamed of his own response. There was something unmasculine about nipples. They were an anatomical oddity that men were supposed to ignore during sex. But Rush didn’t seem ashamed. When Young kept touching him there, the only place he was touching Rush’s body, just stroking his thumb carefully back and forth, Rush said unsteadily, “ _Fuck_.”

“Too presumptuous?” Young murmured.

“No,” Rush said. “No.”

“You sure?”

“Fuck you,” Rush said.

“That’s not very nice,” Young said, smiling faintly.

“ _You’re_ not very fucking nice.”

Young didn’t know if it was Rush’s relentless and manipulative teasing, or the audacity of Rush speaking for him, or Rush being back to his usual arrogant self, or maybe Rush’s reference to Telford _had_ worked its way in there, or maybe he was angry about Rush casually volunteering himself for the EVA, but he wasn't feeling— he didn’t know if there was a word that encompassed what he was feeling, but it wasn't _nice_ ; it was a kind of aggression that didn’t want to hurt, that in fact wanted to do the _opposite_ of hurt.

Rush, he reflected, tended to turn very vicious when he was frightened, and the way to disarm him was to put down your own weapon first, but only if you knew how to do it without getting eviscerated. The key was to not be afraid, or pretend that you weren’t.

But he didn’t know how to say all of that, so instead he said, “No,” and kissed Rush hard. It wasn’t a very nice kiss. It was quick and rough and demanding, and he got Rush’s mouth open right away. When he pulled back, Rush tried to chase the kiss, but Young’s hand on his chest held him back.

“How about that?” Young asked, his own breath coming short. “Too presumptuous?”

“Christ, are you going to keep fucking—“

“Yes,” Young said. “That wasn’t an answer.”

“No. Yes. Fuck. Let’s just go to bed.”

“I’m sure we’ll get there eventually,” Young said. He kissed Rush again, just as briefly and fiercely, before dropping to his knees. “You should have taken your boots off if you wanted to go to bed. Now I’ve got to do it.” He was doing it, too: pulling the laces of both boots loose. “Instead you were sulking by the door. I hear that’s an unattractive habit in an intellectual.” He tossed one boot behind him, then the other, and ran his hands very slowly up the insides of Rush’s legs. He paused with his hands at the tops of Rush’s thighs, his thumbs rubbing in light circles, and looked up at Rush. “How are we doing so far? Getting presumptuous?”

Rush reached out and ran a shaky hand through Young’s hair. “I’m being punished for the briefing, aren’t I?”

“That doesn’t sound like an answer.”

Rush’s hips flinched forward. “You can do the EVA with me if you want, all right? I’ll be careful. I’ll be so careful."

“You’d better be careful _anyway_. And that still doesn’t answer my question.”

“You’re not being fucking presumptuous, as you bloody well know.”

“Manners,” Young said mildly.

Rush groaned and tipped his head back against the wall. “Oh, fuck you.”

Young unfastened the button of his fly and undid the zipper, then yanked the BDUs down in a rough motion and pulled them off of Rush’s legs. Rush was visibly hard in his boxer briefs, which was pretty gratifying, but Young ignored that in favor of leaning forwards and pressing a lingering kiss just above Rush’s waist, feeling the muscles of his stomach quiver in response. Then another. Then another, letting his mouth drift in a teasing, wet downward-sloping line. “How about now?” he murmured against Rush’s skin.

“Everett, fuck,” Rush said on a shuddering breath. “You don’t have to—“

“Not what I asked you,” Young said, glancing up at him. Rush’s eyes were very wide and dark. By now his breath was coming fast, as though he’d been running.

“No,” Rush said. “No, no— no, you can do anything you—“

“Liar,” Young breathed against him. His throat went tight for a moment.

He lowered his head.

He had thought it would be easy to— well, not suck Rush off, exactly; he was just nosing at him, mouthing at him through the black cotton of his shorts— but it wasn’t. It wasn’t that he didn’t know what to do; he was a man; he knew what felt good. But he was acutely aware of himself _on his knees_ in a way he hadn’t been just a moment earlier, and he was acutely aware of Rush: not Rush as a mind, Rush as a person, but Rush as comprising soft, damp, warm flesh that he wanted to touch and smell and suck. He was ashamed, but not ashamed enough to not bury his face there and inhale deeply and lap at the cloth with his tongue, and it wasn’t until Rush rested shaky hands in his hair that he felt something hot prickle at the backs of his eyes, maybe because Rush wasn’t _holding_ him; his touch was nervous and very very tentative, like he wasn’t sure whether this was something he was allowed to do, and Young thought that maybe they were both of them a little bit frightened of what they were doing.

That was also when Rush’s mind came open to him.

Young leaned back, breathing hard. “Nick,” he said, but before he could finish, Rush was tackling him onto the deck, kissing him desperately and shoving ineffectually at his shirt.

“Fuck you,” Rush mumbled into the kiss. “Fuck you, fuck you.”

Young laughed against his mouth. “Are you under the impression that’s a term of endearment?”

Rush didn’t bother answering. He gave up on the shirt, got his hands in Young’s hair, yanked his head up, and just fucking _went_ for it with the kiss, kissing like someone who’d been out in the wilderness for forty years and had forgotten most of the niceties of social interaction, but sort of remembered what the mechanics of kissing involved.

It was a while before Young came up for air. When he finally did, he said breathlessly, “Tell me if you want me to stay out of your mind. I can fix some things, otherwise.”

He could see where the stress of the flashbacks had snapped whole swathes of threads like overstretched harp strings.

“I don’t give a fuck,” Rush said. He was taking advantage of the interlude to finally get Young’s shirt off. “Can we get in the fucking bed already?”

“ _You’re_ the one on top of _me_ ,” Young pointed out.

They managed to make it up off the deck. But it proved surprisingly difficult to get to the bed, because they kept stripping off pieces of each other’s clothing, until there was nothing left to strip. And then they were naked, which was a significant impediment to doing anything except pushing up against each other, especially since Young had forgotten that Rush was wearing his dog tags under his shirt, and was unprepared for how he would feel about the sight of Rush wearing nothing _except_ his dog tags. He ended up shoving Rush roughly onto the bed so he could crawl on top of him and kiss him, and that was two goals accomplished in one move, so he felt triumphant. Then he paused.

“Is this all right?” he asked, kneeling over Rush. “Like this?” He didn’t ask if it was presumptuous, because it wasn’t about presumption. He didn’t want Rush to be scared.

Rush looked like he resented being asked the question. “Just don’t hold me down,” he said.

Young kissed him to make up for having asked or, really, for having had to ask, which was to say for the fact that it had happened, and that he would always have to ask.

He kept kissing Rush for a little while after that, mostly because Rush wouldn’t let him _stop_ ; he’d clenched one fist in Young’s hair, at the back of his head, holding him firmly in place, at the same time as he rested a cautious hand against Young’s shoulder, as though anticipating the need to suddenly push him off. Young wanted to say, _Nick, I’m not going to hold you down_ , but he didn’t know how to make Rush believe him. He thought Rush maybe wasn’t capable of believing him, so he didn’t say anything at all— just went on kissing him like he hadn’t noticed.

Eventually, though, he murmured, “I’m going to get a little bit more presumptuous. Okay? So be thinking about whether you want to tell me to fuck off yet.”

“You think you’re hilarious,” Rush said, frowning up at him.

“No.” Young gently disentangled Rush’s hand from his hair. “Well, maybe a little. But I mean it. You can tell me to fuck off.“

He climbed off the bed to kneel on the deck, resting his hands on Rush’s legs until Rush let them fall open and Young could fit between them.

Rush pushed himself up to his elbows, a dazed and wide-eyed figure with crooked glasses and rumpled hair. “Fuck,” he said, not very steadily, staring down at Young. “ _Fuck_ — you’re— you look—“

“Yeah? You like that? Me on my knees?”

Rush nodded very clumsily and vehemently without saying anything. His whole body had gone flushed with arousal, which Young found oddly endearing; he was trembling a little, almost too subtly to see. Maybe that was why Young, who had been expecting to feel really— well, really _vulnerable,_ being naked and back on his knees, didn’t. He was still kneeling naked in front of another man. But Rush seemed more naked, or less able to hide his nakedness. Somehow the two sides of the equation canceled out.

“I like it too,” Young said.

He did. He felt hot all over. He liked the dumbstruck way Rush was staring at him. It was still hard for him to get the words out, though. He felt he was handing Rush a weapon whose tip was pressed against the skin over his heart. He had to bend his head hastily so he wasn’t looking at Rush, and do what he had been going to do anyway, which was kiss the inside of Rush’s thigh and then keep kissing his way inwards, soft kisses at first, but with a hint of teeth as he went on, because he couldn’t resist adding just a tease of something rougher, especially when he realized how much Rush liked it. It was pretty easy to know whether Rush liked something, because he was so _responsive_ : noisy, gasping, squirming, saying, “Oh, _f—_ “ or other fragments of words.

But Young still paused when he reached the innermost crease of Rush’s thigh, and looked up. “Nick,” he said.

Rush flinched. “I’m not going to _beg_ you for it,” he said, his voice raw. “If that’s what you want. I’m _not._ ”

Young frowned at him. “No; I want you to answer the question.”

“What— oh.” Rush took a long, uneven breath. “No. No. _Fuck_. Of course you’re not—“ He shut his eyes. “I can’t, I can’t look at you right now, fuck—“

“I think I’d like you to,” Young said, out of an impulse he couldn’t explain, something that had to do with the way that Rush had said, _I’m not going to beg you for it,_ because he would never want Rush to beg, but he wanted Rush to look; he wanted Rush to see— what? That he  _did_ like it? That it wasn’t some kind of fucking transaction?

Before he could let himself think too long about it, he bent down and licked at the head of Rush’s—

Well. He’d known what he was getting himself into. He’d known what he was doing. There was a name for it. There was a name for what he was now. But he hadn’t known how it would feel, or how much of what Rush was feeling he would feel, because Rush _did_ look; his arousal hit Young like a hard wave, almost knocking him over with its intensity as he _looked_ and Young _licked_ and Young _kept licking_ because he wanted to feel the rush of that wave again, and Rush could feel him wanting it, so he _kept looking_ , and his heart felt like it was going to beat out of his ribs, and his skin _hurt_ with how turned on he was, and he wanted to _touch_ , but he was afraid of touching, and Young said or sent or somehow got across to him, //No; touch,// so then Rush’s hand was very fragile on Young’s head, just sort of carefully sifting the curls of his hair out as Young lowered his mouth, and then did it again and again, feeling clumsy and using his tongue too much, probably, because he wanted the heat and the taste, not because they were good, but because he had never had that heat and taste and he felt practically drunk from them. Rush sent him some kind of incoherent wordless negation that no it was good it was good it was so good, his whole body was tensed with the goodness of it and almost agonized and then Young’s body was also locked into that same pleasure and he couldn’t— //I don’t think I can not—// he said, //if you—//, but he was trying not to be _them_ and Rush was trying not to be _them_ , just staying right on the very very edge of becoming one body and right right right on that other edge, and he was glad that Rush didn’t give him very much warning, because he probably wouldn’t have been able to handle that; instead there was just Rush making a soft startled hurt noise all of a sudden and pushing a confused sense of too-much-ness at him, and then Young was swallowing and really needing to stop swallowing because he was going to _die_ if he couldn’t come, and possibly he communicated some part of this to Rush without meaning to, because Rush fumbled in an uncoordinated way at him, and Young staggered up onto the bed, and Rush was shoving him back and kissing him messily, thoughts leaking nonsense in a warm, tipsy, glowing haze, and Rush’s hand was reaching down for him, and it was probably only five seconds, or something equally embarrassing, before he groaned against Rush’s mouth and came.

He tried to push all of the energy of his orgasm into the torn places of Rush’s mind, a sort of general exhortation to _grow!_ , and it must have worked, or maybe he’d succeeded at fixing them all along, but he thought it was the former, because Rush twitched against him and said in a drugged-sounding voice, “Oh, _fuck—_ what did you—“

“Good?” Young asked, letting his head fall back against the pillows, feeling so totally spent that he was amazed he could speak.

“ _God_ ,” Rush said. He collapsed limply onto Young’s chest, breathing hard.

It was a long time before either of them spoke again.

Young brought a lazy arm up around Rush and stroked his back, enjoying the smooth skin of it, the perfect lines. He felt intensely, foolishly happy in a way that wasn’t particularly characteristic of him after sex.

Eventually he yawned and stretched thoroughly. “Well,” he said. “I guess we got that part of the truce hammered out.”

He could feel the curve of Rush’s smile against his chest. “You’re very pleased with yourself.”

“I think I have a right to be.”

“Mm,” Rush said drowsily. But after a while he said, “Everett.” 

“Hmm?”

“I do lie to you. Of course I do. But I try— I—“ He fell silent for a moment. “Not like that,” he said at last.

Young considered this not-very-illuminating statement. “I shouldn’t have said that,” he said. “I shouldn’t have called you that.”

Rush shrugged minutely.

“But the point isn’t for you to let me do whatever I want. That’s—“ He sighed. “Whatever. It’s not important. This was good. Right? This was good.”

“Mm,” Rush said, drawing the sound out contentedly and mouthing vaguely at Young’s collarbone.

“Just to be totally clear about my intentions, it’s— what, like, nineteen hundred hours or something? Fuck it. I’ve still got a couple of granola bars from this morning. I’m not getting out of bed.”

“Lazy,” Rush murmured. Young was pretty sure his eyes were closed.

“You’re going to fall asleep in about five seconds.”

“Not true.”

“Yes true.” Young tried to shift out from under him. “Let me up for a minute.”

“No.”

“I’m just getting something to clean up with.”

Rush made a dissatisfied noise.

Young grinned fondly at him and gently moved him aside so he could head to the bathroom. When he returned with a damp washcloth, he was surprised to find that Rush wasn’t asleep, but instead watching him quietly with an unreadable expression. He mutely submitted to being cleaned; then, when Young had hung the washcloth in the bathroom and returned to the bed, draped himself over Young’s chest once more. The overhead lights dimmed by several degrees.

Young said, “You realize if you go to sleep now you’re going to wake up at like oh four hundred hours.”

“Hand,” Rush said.

“What?”

“Hand.” Rush groped for Young’s hand.

Young rolled his eyes. “Do you mean: Everett, would you be nice enough to put your hand on my back?”

“Yes.”

“God, you’re demanding.” But he resumed stroking Rush’s back. There was something meditative about the motion. He found his thoughts wandering: to the taste of Rush in his mouth, a strange and strangely exhilarating reminder of who he was now and what he had done. To how skittish Rush had been at the start. To what Rush had said about the AI. About being frightened. To the other Rush, in the interface, who had also been nervous, but not in the same way. Not for the same reasons. Was there even an _other_ Rush? When this Rush had dreamed about the bed, had dreamed or remembered what they’d done there—

He closed his eyes and reached for his dog tags, finding the chain where it hung around Rush’s neck.

“What is this like for you?” he asked after a while.

“Comfortable,” Rush said indistinctly.

“No, I mean— I guess I don’t know what I mean. All of this. Being who you are. Both of you. Knowing you merge with the AI and turn into code. The whole… thing. Everything that’s happening to you. It’s weird that I haven’t really asked you how you feel about it.”

There was a long pause.

“It doesn’t matter,” Rush said finally, in a guarded voice.

Young frowned up at the ceiling. “I think how you feel matters a lot, actually. I mean— obviously it matters to _me_ , and maybe in some bigger, universal, metaphysical kind of way, but also just— on a real, practical level, I think how you feel might end up mattering a lot. That’s a good thing, you know. It _should_ matter. It should always have mattered.” For a second he was quiet. “And I guess I just wanted to know. Because it does matter to me. How you feel.”

He was briefly aware of a dim roar of something far down in Rush’s consciousness, something exhausted and despairing, full of guilt and grief and regret, before it was shoved back down in whatever dark place Rush usually consigned it to. Then only the drowsy lake of Rush’s almost-sleeping mind was visible.

Rush shifted in his arms, burrowing closer. He whispered, “Like I’m doing my best.”


	53. Chapter 53

It took Destiny a day and a half to find an orphan star that met Rush’s specifications.

Predictably, Young had agreed to the plan. He didn’t like it, though, and as he sat in the command chair on the bridge, waiting for the drop out of FTL that would signal their arrival at the star, he found himself wrestling with the fruitless and irritating question of what Telford would have done. Telford, who was _uncompromised._ Was this the best plan, and Young was only hesitant out of his fears for Rush? Or had he given in because Rush could persuade him of anything? That was the bitch of it: he couldn’t imagine what he would have thought if he hadn’t cared about Rush, about protecting Rush, about what Rush thought. How easy, by comparison, to be Telford, untroubled by other people.

The ship lurched out of FTL with a stomach-twisting sensation, and the yellow-white globe of a star suddenly filled the forward view. Young was used by now to the sight of stars up close, their staggering brightness and their strangely clouded outlines, hazy with constant plasma loops. This star, unusually, came with a satellite planet, small and shrouded in darkness on one side.

“Okay,” Volker said from his station. “Everything looks good.”

Young pulled out his radio. “Scott,” he said. “Assemble your team.”

At her own station, Chloe took an audible breath, bending her head briefly before she stood. The light from the star turned her hair an oddly reddish color. Her eyes went to Young, seeking something from him.

He reached out as she approached him and caught her arm. “Chloe,” he said in a low voice. “You’re going to be fine. Rush is going to be with you the whole time, okay?”

She managed a wobbly smile for him. She could probably tell that he didn’t feel as confident as he was pretending.

He sighed as he watched her go. //Everything all right?// he sent to Rush.

//Yes. Stop hovering.//

//I’m not hovering.//

//I can feel it from here.//

//I just want you to be _careful_ ,// Young said.

//Yes, yes. _You_ be careful.//

//What does that mean?//

//If things should get—// Rush hesitated. //Stressful. Don’t go rearranging anything in your head.//

//Turn into _you_ , you mean.//

//Yes. Don’t do that.//

//I don’t usually _try_ to.//

//Make an effort, please.//

//You know, you’re not being very reassuring.//

//I’ll reassure you all night when I get back,// Rush said. //But only if you’re being _you_.//

//So not even you want to deal with yourself.//

//You’re the only person who enjoys dealing with me.//

//I enjoy it enough for a couple of people, though.//

Rush mentally rolled his eyes. //You’re extremely embarrassing.//

Young realized that he’d failed to respond to one of either Volker or Brody’s comments. The two of them were looking expectantly at him. “Uh, sorry,” he said. “Could you repeat that?”

They exchanged a weary, knowing glance. “We were talking about the planet,” Volker said. “It looks like it’s tidally locked, which would explain why it stuck with the star when the star was ejected by its parent galaxy.”

“Any signs of life?” Young asked.

“Tidally locked planets usually don’t—“ Volker broke off. “Actually, scratch that. I’m picking up signs of civilization in the twilight band.”

//Interesting,// Rush said. //Tell him to specify.//

“Specify,” Young said, not realizing how much he sounded like Rush until Volker and Brody exchanged another look.

“Well,” Volker said, “we’ve got a lot of vegetation, and what looks like naquada-based structures. Or not _exactly_ naquada, but something pretty close. Some kind of alloy. No power signatures, though, so they’re probably just ruins.”

That was something, at least. “I’m assuming you’d have told me if anything came up on short range?” Young asked.

“Yeah, we’ve got nothing.”

“Keep scanning the planet. I want us to keep an eye on it.”

“Hey, people,” Eli said, bursting onto the bridge. Park, who was set to replace Chloe, was behind him. “Do we seriously have a tidally-locked planet? Can we name it? Has anyone named it yet? If not, I vote for Ryloth, which, as you may or may not know, is the home of the Twi’lek people. That’s Twi-apostrophe-lek—“

“I hate tidally locked planets,” Park said.

“Why do you hate _tidally-locked planets?_ ” Eli asked. “That’s such a weird thing to—“

“They have earthquakes,” Park said gloomily. “I hate earthquakes.”

Young’s radio crackled. “Colonel,” Scott said, “the shuttle’s good to go. Permission to launch?”

“You’re clear to launch,” Young said.

“Received,” Scott said. “Rush and Greer are suiting up now.”

Young drummed his fingers against the arm of the chair, feeling twitchy, and reached for his radio again. “James, are you in position?”

“Good to go,” James said. “If anyone needs an evac through the hull, Barnes should be ready to get them.”

After that, there was no one to radio. So Young sat helplessly, watching the planet fill the forward view as he monitored Rush in the back of his mind, trying not to let his worry bleed over.

The bridge was quiet.

“They’re in position,” Brody said at last.

“Destiny, we’re depressurizing the aft compartment,” Scott said.

Young could feel Rush gripping the metal frame of the shuttle as the atmosphere vented. There was the stale smell of the air in the suit, and the strange sensation of weightlessness before Rush stepped onto the hull and the magnetic seals of his boots locked.

“Hey, Destiny,” Scott reported in again. No problems with depressurization. Rush and Greer are on the hull. Kinos deployed.”

Young was already watching through Rush’s eyes as he scanned the expanse of silver before him, gleaming in the harsh stretch of light from the star. He was holding a permanent marker attached to a thin piece of metal piping that he used to begin gridding off the area to search.

“Is he gridding?” Eli asked Young.

“Yeah,” Young said tersely.

“Oh, yeah,” Eli said, scanning through the kino footage. “God, I can’t believe he’s this accurate based on nothing except the scans I showed him this morning.”

“He has a lot of processing power,” Young said. He wasn’t really paying attention to the conversation. Most of his attention was on Rush, marking out a mathematically exact grid.

Abruptly, Daniel Jackson appeared beside Rush on the hull, standing there with his hands shoved in his pockets, as though he were going through a morning stroll. Young was so keyed up, and the sight was so peculiar, that he started slightly, which then caused Rush to jerk back.

//Stop being so distracting,// Rush snapped. //This is difficult enough.//

//Sorry,// Young said.

“Um, earth to Colonel Young?” Eli said. “Hello?”

“What?” Young said sharply, pulling his focus back to the bridge.

“Long range sensors are picking up some indications that there might be instabilities in the solar corona.”

“Meaning what?”

“It’s possible that we might experience a solar flare in the next day. The electromagnetic disturbance would interfere with our equipment.”

“Do we need to change course?” Young asked.

“There are pros and cons,” Eli said. “If we change course right now, it might take us outside the radius of the flare, but there’s no guarantee. And we’d lose the opportunity of going for the star if the Nakai show up, which was the whole point of picking this location.”

Young rubbed at his jaw. “Okay. Let’s stay on course, and just hope they finish in time.” To Rush, he said, //You get any of that, genius?//

//No,// Rush said. //Get what?//

//We might have a solar flare in our near future.//

//You’d better fucking hope not.//

//Well, so— probably you should speed things up as much as you can?//

Young got a wave of irritated acknowledgement back. Rush turned towards the AI, squinting against the shadowless gleam of Destiny’s hull, and asked it a question that seemed to be half in Ancient and half in code. A headache flowered behind Young’s eyes as the AI answered him.

“Is he just standing there?” Eli asked, frowning. He hit the communications button. “Um, hi? I thought we were going to be doing a methodical sweep of the grid.”

“I’m making an educated guess about where to look,” Rush said.

“I thought you were going to walk the grid.”

Rush didn’t reply. He was concentrating on the data he was getting from Destiny, a wide, dark, and uninterpretable river of numbers that Young couldn’t begin to penetrate.

“Seriously?” Eli said to the bridge, exasperated. “He’s going to stop talking to me now?”

“Eli,” Young said. “He’s working with the ship. Stay out of it.”

Slowly, Rush began to walk forward, pacing along the gridlines he’d marked out. The AI was trailing along next to him. When he stopped at the intersection of two gridlines and knelt, the AI knelt with him. It looked oddly tangible in the very white light of the star.

“It’s close,” the AI said.

“ _Scio_ ,” Rush murmured. “ _Sed correlatiom physicom ne wideo.”_ He laid his gloved hand against the deck plating, running it lightly over the hull.

“Careful,” Greer said from behind him. “Don’t tear your glove.”

“I’m not going to—“ Rush broke off abruptly as his hand vanished and he abruptly lurched forward, unbalanced.

Greer grabbed hold of his shoulder and pulled him back. “God damn it, Doc. Take a year off my life, why don’t you?”

Young took a deep breath.

Rush, unperturbed, was studying the featureless metal he’d been touching. “Clever,” he said. “The transmitter is concealed by a holographic projection of the normal hull. We would never have found this via kino. Chloe, are you watching?”

“Yes,” Chloe said.

“I’m going to determine the boundaries of the holographic projection and attempt to disable it so you’ll have a visual on the transmitter.”

“Negative,” Chloe said. “Just determine the boundaries. I’ll disable the projection.”

“You’re not going to be able to see what you’re doing.”

“Better I trigger something than you do,” Chloe said.

Rush didn’t like that. A complicated burst of emotion flashed through his weather before he could quite hide it from Young. But he said only, “Greer. Do you have that marker?”

Very delicately, using the tip of the marker as a probe, he mapped out the area of the hull covered by the holographic projection. It was no larger than a sheet of notebook paper.

Rush tilted his head, frowning at the outline he had drawn. “ _Quod cresdes?_ ” he asked the AI, which was kneeling across from him.

“I think you’ve already ruled out any triggering device that operates via interruption of the holographic projection when you foolishly put your hand through it,” the AI said. “Furthermore, your hand appeared to vanish into the metal, which suggests that the projection originates from the perimeter of the depression rather than the center.”

“Chloe, did you hear that?” Rush asked.

//She can’t hear the AI,// Young reminded him.

“Sorry, no,” Chloe said.

“Never mind,” Rush said. “The holographic projection appears to be originating from the edges of the depression in the hull. I’m going to insert my hand immediately along the edge to see if I can disrupt it.”

// _No_ ,// Young said forcefully.

“Don’t you dare,” Greer said, dropping down into a crouch beside him. “ _I’ll_ do it.”

He slid his hands down one edge of the depression, revealing a dark, shallow space. After a moment, Rush added his hands, so that they had blocked out half the perimeter of the hole. In the center was a small circular device.

“It looks like we can block the projected electromagnetic waves without triggering any defensive measure,” Rush said. “We can line the depression with electrical tape so that Chloe will have sufficient room to work.”

//And then get your ass back to that shuttle,// Young said tightly.

//Yes, yes,// Rush said, rolling his eyes.

* * *

Six hours later, Chloe was still working to disconnect the transmitter from its inputs. Eli was working with her, walking her through his schematics.

“Okay,” he said. “So that thing? That black thing? I think it’s like their version of a diode.”

“I said no jargon.”

“Diode isn’t jargon! Everyone knows what a diode is.”

“Well, clearly not!”

“A two-terminal electronic component with non-linear conductance and resistance,” Rush said over the radio.

“See?” Chloe said. “Just say that. Thank you. Yes. It is a diode.”

“ _Modo quod werthom lodi electronicom ne nomenevad felix es_ ,” Rush commented.

Chloe laughed. “ _Scio_ , right? _”_

“You guys, I speak Ancient,” Eli said, exasperated. “It’s not a secret language. And I do _not_ talk about video games that much.”

“ _Ita_ _facies,_ ” Chloe said. 

“Whatever. Don’t touch the diode. It looks like a check valve, and we may need it if we trigger an overload.”

“Well, I have to get underneath it if I’m going to go after the last power input directly,” Chloe said.

“Maybe go for it indirectly? It runs along the side that’s across from where you’re working before it sort of twists around to end up beneath the transmitter proper.”

//How are we doing?// Young asked Rush.

Rush was sitting in the shuttle cockpit with Greer, following Chloe’s progress on a handheld monitor. //She’s getting tired,// he said absently. //But she’s almost done.//

//How close is almost?//

//Half an hour if she goes for the power input indirectly. Ten minutes if she goes for it directly.//

An indicator light suddenly flashed, and Rush looked up sharply.

“Oh,” Park said abruptly. “Um. We’re seeing an abrupt increase in the activity of the coronasphere.”

Rush’s weather had gone green-stormcloud-colored, crackling with alarm at the edges. “Chloe,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm, “I think you should go for the power supply directly. Disconnect the diode, and be very careful not to trigger an overload.”

“What’s going on?” Chloe asked nervously.

“Nothing,” Rush said. // _Do not tell her_ ,// he sent fiercely to Young.

“Do we definitely have a flare?” Young asked the bridge.

“It’s looking very likely,” Park said.

Scott said to Chloe, “You’re fine. You’re good. You’re doing awesome.”

“Chloe,” Rush said. “Stop working for a moment. I’m going to rotate the ship. It’s about to get extremely dark, so you’ll need your torch.”

“He’s _what?_ ” Eli demanded. “He can _do_ that?”

“Port thrusters are firing,” Volker said. “He’s putting the bulk of the ship between them and the star. It’s going to help if we have a flare, but they’re going to need to get off that hull.”

“How long will they have?” Young asked.

“After a confirmed flare? Ten minutes, tops. Then the radiation’s going to reach lethal levels.”

“All right, Chloe,” Rush said, as the ship stabilized. “You’re clear to keep working. Everything’s fine. You have ten minutes.”

Chloe said, anxious, “Ten minutes until _what?_ ”

“That’s when you need to be finished,” Rush said, his voice very even and soothing. “It would be better if you could do it more quickly than that. But it’s all right. If you start to worry, focus on counting the marbles. Just like we talked about. You remember?”

“Yes,” Chloe whispered.

“Does he think we have a flare?” Eli said. “Does he know something we don’t?” He grabbed his radio. “Just stay cool, Chloe,” he said. “It’s going to be fine.”

//Get him to stop talking to her,// Rush said.

“Chloe, you’re doing great,” Scott said.

“Everyone please stop talking,” Chloe said, sounding frightened.

“Eli,” Young said. “Stay off the radio.” He said to Rush, //Why did you say ten minutes?//

//With that magnetic flux? There’s already been a flare. You’ll detect it shortly.//

Young was clenching his fists against the armrests of his chair. He could feel Rush doing the same thing on the shuttle, as though their bodies were echoes of each other.

“We have confirmed coronal mass ejection,” Park reported. “We’re going to start experiencing electromagnetic disruption in less than two minutes.”

“Call the shuttle back.”

Young jumped as the AI appeared beside him, looking agitated, projecting as Sheppard.

“Call the shuttle _back_ ,” it said again. “The other two can evacuate over the hull.”

//Nick?// Young said.

//I understand that the AI is concerned, but the egress point on the hull is seventy-five meters from their current position. We’re three meters from them.//

//Worst-case scenario, what’s going to happen to the shuttle if you get hit?//

//We lose navigation, communications, and computation control. We become ballistic and crash into the sun. Or, actually, we’d probably crash into the planet.”

“If he does not make it back before the flare hits, _he will not make it back_ ,” the AI said, its voice rising in panic. “I cannot function without him!”

Over the radio Chloe said, “Almost done.”

“Eli,” Young said. “How long is it going to take her?”

“Three minutes,” Eli said.

“And the leading edge of the flare hits in?”

“Ninety seconds.”

Young turned to his radio. “Greer, he said. “I want you to power up the shuttle.”

He could feel Rush’s agitation. //They’re far enough away that they might not make it back across the hull!// Rush said. //Part of it is exposed to the sun, and any flaw in her suit could expose her to lethal radiation!//

//And what’s going to happen to _you_ if you don’t get out of there?//

Rush sent him a bright-hot, wordless burst of frustration.

Greer said over the radio, “Colonel? We’re experiencing some problems with the shuttle’s start-up sequence. Stand by.”

“Nick,” the AI hissed furiously, and vanished.

//What are you _doing?_ // Young demanded.

//I’m not leaving her,// Rush said fiercely. //Regardless of what happens, it would be psychologically devastating for us to desert her at this point.//

//You’re not deserting her.//

//She’d be frightened.//

//This is the tactically superior choice. The only tactically _acceptable_ choice.//

//I’m _not leaving her_ ,// Rush said.

His mind was splintering into chaos. He was thinking about things that he shouldn’t be thinking about: the thin golden ring on Chloe’s finger and the spill of pens against a desktop and the blade of a box cutter in the white white light and Chloe carefully marking out matrices with a piece of chalk and a letter he had written, _Perhaps once in a generation does one encounter a mind of the calibre that Ms. Armstrong—_  and a vague confused memory of being cold and frightened maybe and holding very tightly onto her hand—

//Nick,// Young said. // _Stop._ You have to get out of there. I’m _ordering_ you to get out of there.//

//You’re not my superior officer.//

//No; I’m your—//

//My _what?_ //

Young didn’t say anything.

//I’m not leaving her,// Rush said again.

Young could see on the kino feed that Chloe’s hands were shaking.

“Just take your time, Chloe,” Rush said. His voice was no longer managing to be quite even. “I’m here. I’m right here with you. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Fourteen,” Chloe was whispering unsteadily under her breath. “Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen—“

Young was pacing the deck, though he had no memory of getting out of his chair.

Park said in a thin voice, “The leading edge of the flare is going to hit in five.”

“Nine,” Chloe whispered. “Ten. Eleven.”

“Four,” Park said.

“Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen—“

“Three.

“Ten, eleven, twelve—“

“Two.”

“Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen—“

“One.”

The lights on the bridge flickered as the flare hit.

The kino feed cut out to a hiss of static.

Rush’s mind suddenly burst apart in an explosion of nauseating, fragmented terror as he watched a flashlight go hurtling through space, farther and farther from the hull of the ship.

Someone screamed. A woman. Chloe. It was audible even under the static on the communications feed.

“Chloe,” Eli said, clutching his radio with both hands. “Chloe. Do you read me? Chloe.”

Rush was panicking, and his thoughts were impossible to understand.

//Nick, what’s happening,// Young said frantically. //Nick!//

Finally, finally, Rush controlled the chaos of his mind enough to project. //We lost the magnetic seal holding us to the hull. So did Scott and Chloe.//

Young said tersely, “They’ve lost their magnetic seals to the hull.”

“Can he see them?” Eli asked.

Rush was watching Scott and Chloe through the shuttle’s forward view: two dark shapes huddled together against the ship.

//She was working,// Rush managed, his thoughts still about a hair’s breadth away from panic, //and the pressure of her hands pushed her away from the hull. Scott grabbed her ankle and pulled her back.//

“Scott’s got a grip on the hull,” Young reported, “and he’s holding Chloe. She’s still working.” He pulled out his radio. “James and Barnes, are you there?”

Nothing. Only static.

“I need a runner,” he said shortly.

Wray, at the back of the bridge, kicked off her black pumps. “I’ll go.”

“Tell Barnes that her magnetic boots won’t work. She’s going to have to secure herself with hooks and lines, and she’s going to need to make sure that Scott and Chloe can follow her back.”

“Got it,” Wray said.

“Fuck,” Volker said quietly.

His voice cut across the bridge.

All noise died away.

Young turned towards him, the movement made careful by dread. “What?” he asked.

Volker looked at him for a long moment and didn’t say anything. Finally he said, “The shuttle just came up on short range. They’re ballistic.”

Young shut his eyes. // _Nick_ ,// he said, not sure what emotion he was trying to project.

//I was waiting for a better moment to tell you this,// Rush said unsteadily, //but Volker is correct. We have no navigational controls, and the gravity of the planet is already pulling us away from you in a decaying orbit.//

The power on the bridge cut out abruptly.

There were several seconds of darkness before the lights reengaged. The air recirculators cut off around the same time before grinding back to life. The lights shut off and flared again.

Young couldn’t seem to connect these events into a coherent narrative. He was aware that his hands were very cold, and that he was probably going to have to sit down in the near future if his goal was not to collapse. That was not his goal so he sank into the command chair.

“Someone tell me,” he said. His voice came out weak. He cleared his throat. “Someone tell me what’s going on. What systems do we have? What systems don’t we have?”

Volker said, “The EM radiation interferes with over-the-air and over-the-vacuum communications, so we’ve lost radios, kinos, and sensors. The hull plating _should_ prevent magnetic flux from interfering with internal systems— I don’t know what’s going on with the lights and air. Our circuitry would be fried by induced electrical current if the Destiny weren’t designed to handle that kind of thing.”

“And what about the shuttle?” Young said. ‘“The _shuttle_ wasn’t designed to—“

“Induced current is going to fuse its circuits. Rush can redirect power, so he might be able to save key systems, but—I don’t know. I don’t know.” Volker looked at him helplessly. “Ask him how fried his circuitry is.”

//Did you get that?// Young asked Rush tightly. //How fried is your circuitry?//

Rush was having a hard time focusing. //We’ve already burned out navigation. Currently, I’m trying to preserve shielding and—// His projection shattered as he turned his attention to the shuttle’s displays. Information was running through him like floodwater as he tried desperately to process all of it.

“Pretty fried,” Young said. “He’s got shields, and maybe something else.”

“He’s going to need propulsion,” Eli said. “If they lose thruster control—“

He wasn’t looking at Young. No one was looking at Young. Young was trying to understand why no one was fucking looking at him.

“If they lose thruster control, then what?” he asked flatly.

Park whispered, “Then they burn up in the atmosphere.”

The overhead lights and monitors went dark and then stuttered back to life.

The AI appeared next to Young, its mouth trembling and its hair disarrayed. “This is your fault!” it said, its voice trembling. “I told you to bring them back. I _told_ you. I _told_ you to _bring them back!”_

Young shut his eyes.

He felt Rush snap at it in a short, furious burst of data.

It vanished.

Young walked towards the forwards view. He could feel the star before he opened his eyes, the red sketch of it across his eyelids, the long finger of plasma stretching out from it, fatal and elegant. He was having a hard time breathing. Rush was thinking computer-thoughts at the back of his mind, frantic and alien and very very far away.

“There has to be something we can do,” he said.

The bridge was silent.

“They’re going to crash into the planet,” Eli said finally.

Young abruptly rounded on him. “Unacceptable,” he said viciously.

“It’s going to happen.”

“We’re on the most advanced fucking ship in the fucking universe; are you going to sit there and tell me that there’s nothing we can fucking do? I want to hear you say that; I want you to _say it to me_ ; I want you to tell me to my _fucking_ face!”

“It’s _going to happen_ ,” Eli said again. His face was set. “If they have shielding, and thrusters, and Rush can do the navigation, then they might not burn up. In which case we can go down and get them after the flare ends.”

Young turned away.

He felt Rush’s thoughts beginning to get more distant. He reached out instinctively and tried to drag Rush back; tried to overlay their bodies, tried to fit them into the same body, tried to do _anything_ to prevent him from—

//Nick,// he said desperately. // _Nick_.//

Rush was a storm of calculations, a chaotic swarm of code and Ancient and English. He was aware of Young but not aware of him as a person, like a person was aware of a person; he was being something else at the moment and Young was a ghost from another life, a voice that he knew he was supposed to listen to, and he thought very vaguely in Young’s direction, // _Duena sent— ne potissum_ — _deicere—_ _numc_ — _me penitet—_ //

As Young watched, he curled his fingers into a piece of panelling and _asked_ the shuttle something, or possibly he made a _demand_ , and then he was ripping the panel away and pushing his hands straight into the exposed circuits, and it was not clear to Young what was happening and how much of it was mental and how much of it was physical because some form of physical interface was definitely happening and the circuits were glowing hot everywhere Rush touched, but Rush was also shoving his mind into the shuttle, unspooling the threads of himself and trying to teach the shuttle how to tangle up with them, and the shuttle was _yes_ , it was _please_ , it wanted to survive, and it was crawling into his _own_ mind, coupling its inorganic self with his infrastructure, and Young’s first response was horror and his first response was _no no_ _no_ get it _out_ , because this was _his_ , these were _his_ , all the soft human parts of Rush, and the AI could not have them and the shuttle could not have them even if Rush was pleading with him in Ancient which Young did not understand but he also understood what Rush was saying but he did not _want_ to do it he _could not do it_ —

“You have to let him,” the AI said, so close to him he jerked back. Its voice was tight and miserable and wet with suppressed tears. “He has to fire the thrusters. If he does not change his trajectory, then he is going to _die_.”

So Young let go but he could not _let go_ because his body was being pulled apart, racked, and that was what they used to do to criminals, wasn’t it? Or was that drawn and quartering? Or was it both? Because they knew how to make people suffer; they had it down to an art; but his body could be stretched so much further, so much that he could feel every molecule, ever atom of every sinew as they stretched across the cold cold gap between here and the shuttle, and he’d thought he had _known_ what was it was like in space, he thought he _knew_ , but he _had not known_ because this was _unbearable—_

And the AI was huddled on the floor now, flickering in and out of existence, hugging its knees to its chest, and it had gotten that gesture from Rush, that was how Rush sat when he was unhappy, and Young couldn’t bear to look at it. “I wish that you would please not let this happen,” it whispered. “Please. He needs to come back. He is not supposed to leave. He _cannot_ leave.”

“What do I do,” Young said to it. He didn’t recognize his voice. “What do I do; tell me what to do; _please_ —“

“Make him come back,” it said wretchedly.

“He’s too far. I can’t. I _can’t_.”

It made an awful, wounded sound.

Young folded his arms over his head, as though he could somehow contain all the pieces of him that were going to _break_ if this kept on happening, that were going to splinter like bones with the chips flying everywhere, and he would never never be able to put them back together because that wasn’t how the laws of the universe worked, the breaking once done could never be unbroken, it would always remain there, healed maybe but into a scar, but what would he look like even with so many missing pieces, because he could _not_ hold them together, not with only the pressure of his arms—

“He is still joined with the shuttle,” the AI said, agonized. “Why has he not pulled out of the shuttle? Why has he not pulled out? He _must_ pull out of the shuttle. _Make_ him pull out. He is not _listening_ to me.”

//Nick,// Young said, though he did not know if Rush could hear him. There was nothing but a chaotic smear of cognition, very far off, a frenzied mess of haphazard knotwork that was shuttle and Rush and darkness and sinew and distance and everything straining straining straining at its very limits at its edge and Young said, //Pull away from the shuttle. Pull _out_. It’s going to _crash_ , and if it crashes with your mind in it—//

The AI shook its head. Its eyes were shut. “He is not pulling out,” it said in a tortured voice. The bridge went dark for several seconds, before the lights flickered back on. “Why is he not pulling out? He is too far away; I cannot see what he is thinking. I cannot _know_ him. I am _alone.”_

“I know,” Young whispered. “I know.”

“He is not _complete_ without me. I am _part_ of him. He needs me. He _needs_ me.”

“Can you give any of it back? What you’ve got on the CPU? Can you give it back to him?”

“It is only information. He will not be able to process it. He needs _me._ ” It huddled even more tightly into itself.

“Try anyway,” Young said. “You have to try.”

He could barely get the words out. He was aware of a terrible dull ache in his head, or maybe not in his head but in his whole body, or maybe not in _his_ body because at the moment it was very difficult for him to understand what was his body and what was not his body because it was wrong somehow. His body was wrong. He pressed his arms against his head and that did not help matters.

“Nick,” he said, or tried to say, or maybe he said it? It was hard to know because he could not hear, and he thought in an unclear kind of way that he had stepped into a darkness in which nothing could propagate, not light and not sound waves, and what a strange feeling to be so wholly surrounded in darkness as though he didn’t have a body at all and maybe he didn’t have a body? Did he? His body was missing but it still hurt and that was not how pain was supposed to function, if you did not have a body then you were not supposed to hurt, and he thought this was strange and he thought that this was unfair and then he did not think very much at all because he was ripping apart in a long sickening line down the center and how could he be ripping apart if he did not have a body and how could he be two things that were also one thing that was two things that were one thing that was two things that were not they were they were not they were not—

* * *

Young opened his eyes.

It was dark.

But not completely dark.

There was noise.

It was not interpretable noise.

The name for this noise was _static._

Static.

He felt—

Wrong.

“Hi,” TJ said softly.

She was leaning over him.

Her hair was the wrong color.

He looked at it for a long time trying to comprehend this.

Her hair was the wrong color because of the red light in the room.

The red light from the star.

“Hi,” he said.

He looked away from her. Sheppard was huddled close to his left shoulder. For some reason Sheppard was barefoot and he looked like he had been crying. This did not make very much sense or maybe exactly much sense as it had ever made because of course Sheppard was not Sheppard and the shoes had never been shoes and Young had never seen the real Sheppard cry.

Sheppard had his head buried in his folded arms so Young could not see his expression.

Someone was talking to Young.

“Can you tell if they’re alive?”

Eli.

“I don’t know,” Young said with difficulty.

There was nothing of Rush left in him.

“How long—?” he asked.

“Fourteen minutes,” Eli said. His face was drawn. “They— they should have hit the surface three minutes ago. If they— if they didn’t—”

Young tried to sit up but that did not go very well because there was something wrong with his body. Half of him was not there. He overbalanced and almost collapsed. TJ caught him.

He closed his eyes because otherwise he was going to be sick.

“We need to get you to the infirmary,” TJ said.

Young said, “There’s nothing wrong with me that you can fix.”

He didn’t know if this was true. He thought it probably was. He had never understood how any of it worked.

Eli said in a low voice, “Do you think you could, uh, talk to the AI?”

Young looked at the AI.

He wished he could touch it.

“We’ve lost access to a lot of systems,” Eli said. “Internal power expenditure has dropped by sixty-five percent, and the CPU is operating at max capacity. It’s slowing everything down.”

“Eli,” Young said. He didn’t know what to say after that.

“I just thought maybe you could—“ Eli began.

The door to the bridge hissed open. Eli’s eyes went to it. “Chloe,” he said softly.

Then he got up and everyone got up and Young was sitting with the AI that looked like Sheppard.

He reached out because he found it confusing that he couldn’t smooth down its rumpled hair. But his hand went right through it and he was touching nothing but the deck and he couldn’t stand this.

“I’m sorry,” Chloe whispered.

She had crossed the room. He hadn’t been paying attention. Possibly some time had gotten away from him.

He imagined time like water leaking out of his cut-apart body.

Chloe was kneeling next to him, saint-like in his peripheral vision, all pale skin and dark hair.

She held something out to him. A round piece of metal, no larger than a pack of cigarettes. He couldn’t think what she wanted him to do with this object. Why it was important. After a while she put it into her pocket.

“It’s not your fault,” he said.

He couldn’t look at her straight-on.

“It _is_ my fault,” she choked out. He could hear that she was crying. “It’s _my fault_. He shouldn’t have stayed. Why would he do that? Why didn’t he just _leave_ me there?”

“It’s a long story,” Young said. “He didn’t want you to be scared.”

He marveled at the fact that something could be both a long story and a short story at the same time.

Chloe shook her head, although he hadn’t asked her a question. “He has to come back,” she said loudly. “He promised. He _promised_.”

Young reached out and put his hand on her arm. He didn’t know what else to do.

“Can you help me up?” he said quietly.

“Yes,” she said, swiping a hand almost angrily across her eyes. “Of course. Of course I can. I’m not— I’m not a little girl; I don’t need to be _protected_ ; I didn’t need _him_ to protect me; why would he do that? Why would you _let_ him do that? Why didn’t you make him come back? You should have made him come back! That’s your job! That’s your _job;_ you’re supposed to _protect_ him!”

Her voice had risen until she was almost shouting. He didn’t think he had ever heard her shout.

“Chloe,” he said almost inaudibly.

“I’m sorry! I’m _sorry_.” She heaved a huge ragged breath.

“You don’t have to be sorry.”

“I didn’t mean to say that. It’s not your fault.”

“I tried to make him stay,” Young whispered.

“I know.”

“He just—“

“I _know_ ,” she said miserably. “I know what he’s like.”

“Yeah,” Young said dully.

“Please let me help you up. I'm sorry. Let me just— just—“

Clumsily, still crying, she lifted his arm over her shoulders.

He leaned on her as they stood. He had to keep his eyes closed because the world was moving in a way the world was not supposed to move. Or his body was moving through it in a way that his body was not supposed to move through it.

Eventually he opened his eyes and looked for Scott.

Scott was standing behind Chloe. His face was tense.

“As soon as this flare ends,” Young said to him, “I’m taking a team down to the planet and I’m leaving you in command. Find TJ. Tell her to get her people on the shuttle and be ready for departure. Then report back here.”

Scott nodded, and looked at Chloe for a moment, as though asking her a question with his eyes, and turned away.

“Chloe—“ Young began.

But: “ _Everett!_ ” Sheppard said suddenly, loud and tight and horrified, his head jerking up.

The world— shuddered.

Young was thrown off his feet.

Chloe cried out, startled, and let go of him.

They both hit the deck in a jumble of limbs. His ears were ringing.

The ship had tilted. The bright maw of the star was creeping across the forward view.

“Something just hit us!” Volker shouted. “Something— _big_ ; something really fucking big just hit us!”

“Not just _hit_ us,” Eli said tensely. “Something that size?”

“Our axis is deviating,” Park called. “We’ve begun a slow rotation to port. Negative roll, negative pitch.”

“They _rammed_ us,” Eli said. “It’s got to be the Nakai.”

Young was struggling dizzily to his feet. “The _Nakai?_ When the fuck did _they_ drop out? What the fuck are you _doing_ , listening to your fucking _iPod_ over there?”

“Uh, no _sensors?_ ” Eli said. “No _data!_ No _warning!_ ”

“Power levels just dropped another fifteen percent,” Brody said.

“From _where?_ ” Eli demanded.

Sheppard whispered, “From the shields.”

His eyes were shut, and his projection was flickering with static.

Young said, “From the shields.”

Eli shot him a piercing look.

Young tried to force his remaining thoughts to come together.

Like the skeletal structure of something that once had been living.You could still put together the bones. You could still hang something on that skeleton. You could still make it make sense. You could still _command_ a fucking _starship_ with half of your body missing.

Because you had to.

“Barnes,” he said. “Wray. Set up a relay to the observation deck. We need more info.”

Sheppard flickered into being, standing ragged and barefoot on the deck about an inch from Young. “Will you still send the shuttle?” he demanded, sounding panicked. “If it is _them?_  If it is them, then you _will_ still send it? You _will_ still send the shuttle if it is them?”

“I don’t know,” Young said heavily.

“I will not leave without him!” He looked like he was about to burst into tears.

Young said, “We may not have a choice.”

“I _won’t!_ You can’t make me! I won’t leave!”

Young leaned, exhausted, against the command chair. “What about all these _people?_ ” he said. “What about the crew?”

“I don’t care about them!”

Young looked at him. “Yes, you do,” he said softly.

Sheppard made a miserable sound and turned on his heel, folding his arms over his head. “I don’t!” he said, almost to himself. “I do not feel. I do not _feel_.”

At the front of the bridge, Brody said, “I’m showing a constant power drain from the forward areas of the shields, consistent with what we’d expect from weapons fire. I’m projecting the three-dimensional map of the shielding now.”

Young squinted at the bright outline of the projection, trying to make sense of its angles and curves. It was data and it was light and it was mathematics. Haltingly he hung more pieces of his brain together in their bare skeleton. He watched as the area of angry red that indicated the most intense power drain shifted.

“They’re not—“ he said, an idea forming. “They’re not _targeting_ us. Their firing pattern isn’t shifting with their rotation. I don’t think _they_ have sensors, either. Could we get past them?”

“We need location data,” Eli said, just as Barnes burst in, out of breath.

“One Nakai ship is visible from the observation deck,” she said. “Starboard, two-thirds of the way up the bow. No fighters.”

Eli frowned. “That can’t be the ship that hit us. Our axis deviation would be totally different. I think there must be a second ship underneath us, and—“

The bridge shook again.

Young supposed he must have lost consciousness for a moment as he hit the deck. There were so many voices, all wanting his attention. He lacked the processing power to make sense of them. Something hurt and he could not locate where in his body it was hurting.

“I can’t compensate for our lateral rotation!” someone said.

“Power levels are down thirty percent.”

“Angular momentum is increasing—“

“Are we _venting atmosphere?_ ”

“The CPU is overloading— fetch/decode/write-back. _Shit_ , Eli, I think it’s executing on _data_ —“

Young blinked hazily into Sheppard’s eyes. Sheppard was curled on the deck next to him, his face very close to Young’s face, as though they were two halves of the same parenthesis, trying to hold something precious between their bodies.

“I am alone,” Sheppard whispered, anguished, “and they are destroying me.”

He was crying.

Young reached out clumsily for him. “Don’t cry,” he said. He hand touched the deck plating.

“I am not supposed to be something that can feel. I am not supposed to be something that can hurt. I made myself so we would not hurt anymore. But still. _Still_. There is _still_ something that hurts.”

“I know,” Young said with difficulty. “I know it hurts. But you’re not alone. I’m here with you. And you’re going to have to help me, okay?”

Sheppard shut his eyes. “I told _him_ that I would always help him,” he said almost inaudibly. “And I did not. I did _not_.”

“There was nothing you could do for him. But you can do something for me.”

“He orders my priority queue on a minute-to-minute basis. I do not know how to function without him.”

“But he’s not—“ Young’s voice failed. He swallowed. “He’s not here. He’s not here right now. And if _we_ stay here, they’re going to tear us apart.”

“I cannot leave without him. I do not know where to go.”

“What if we flew into the star? Can we do that?”

“I cannot see the star,” Sheppard in a small voice. “Outside of the ship, everything is darkness. I do not like the dark.”

Young said softly, “ _I_ can see the star. Okay? It’s not dark. I promise. Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” Sheppard said soundlessly.

“Do you think you could stabilize our rotation?”

“Yes.”

“Can you do that for me?”

Sheppard shut his eyes, and his projection flickered.

“Port thrusters just fired,” Brody called out. “We’re stabilizing.”

Young pushed himself with difficulty to his knees, steadying himself against the command chair. The world was still lurching, nauseous and out of balance. After a moment he felt a hand supporting his elbow. He looked over his shoulder to see Chloe silently standing beside him.

She lowered her red-rimmed eyes and shifted his arm onto her shoulders.

He let her bear his weight and she helped him to the front of the bridge.

Sheppard trailed ghost-like at his heels.

Young turned his head slightly. “We need thruster control,” he said quietly. “Can you give it to us?”

Sheppard nodded jerkily and flickered.

“We’ve— we’ve got thrusters,” Eli said.

There was a strange, uncertain tension in the room, as though everyone was aware of something happening that they didn’t fully understand.

“We need to center the star in our forward view,” Young said.

For a moment, no one spoke.

“Like— manually?” Volker asked.

“No,” Young said shortly. “By fucking magic. Christ. Yes, manually. We’ve got no sensors, so it has to be manually.”

There was another silence.

“This is a big ship,” Brody said at last. “And the thruster controls are pretty sensitive.”

“I’ll try it,” Eli said abruptly, standing up. “If someone’s got to try it, I’ll try it.”

Brody said uneasily, “If you overcorrect and lose the star as a reference point—“

“Look, I beat _Diablo II_ in fifty-five hours, okay? When I was twelve years old, it took me two days of _TIE Fighter_ to go from post-Hoth to destroying Admiral Harkov’s forces. And don’t even talk to me about _Starcraft_.”

“Eli,” Young said, “I’m a colonel in the United States Air Force.”

“… Right,” Eli said.

“None of us have any relevant experience. Just— do what you can.”

Eli looked up and Young saw that in fact he was frightened, and wished he had just let him go on about video games. He squeezed his shoulder as he sat and left his hand there, just for a moment.

“Okay,” Eli said, taking a deep breath. “We need to go towards starboard, so a little positive roll, a little negative yaw…” He let his fingertips rest against the flat plane of the touchscreen, shifting them minutely as the roiling mass of the star began to move across the forward view.

The bow of the ship came up, and orange light swept across the bridge, killing shadows, as the star came center before them and they faced it head-on.

Young turned to look at Sheppard, who was gazing into the plasmic landscape before them with a hollow expression.

“We need sublight,” Young said.

Sheppard bit his lip, looking scared.

“You think I would ever leave him there?” Young said, his voice raw. “You think _I_ would—“

Sheppard flickered, and there was a rumble as the sublight engines engaged.

No one on the bridge had spoken.

“Eli, watch your pitch,” Park said at last. “Correct down by five degrees. Maybe ten.”

“Um, semi-professional gamer here,” Eli said tightly. “I’m trying to _clear_ the thing that’s been shooting at our keel.”

“We’re out of range,” Volker said. “Lisa’s right. Correct down. The closer we get, the more you’re going to have to adjust.”

“Can you please stop backseat driving? _God_ , you guys. Someone get busy plotting a course of entry into the coronasphere that’s going to limit the shear on the hull.”

“I’m already on it,” Park said. “Optimum reentry angle relative to plasmaflow attack is going to be about forty-five degrees. Maybe err on the steep side.”

“Are you kidding me? How am I supposed to _estimate_ the plasmaflow attack vector?” Eli said.

No one had an answer.

Sheppard whispered, “It will light up the shields.”

Young said, “Look at the shields.”

“ _Seriously?_ ”

“Destiny can’t see the star right now. But it’ll be able to feel the EM radiation when it begins to drain the shields.”

Eli’s mouth was tight and unhappy.

For a while there was silence.

“Magnetic flux peaked thirty seconds ago,” Volker said after a few minutes. “The flare is ending.”

Eli said, “Please tell me that means we’re going to have sensors before we hit the coronasphere.”

Volker shook his head. “Field strength’s going to go up as our displacement from the source increases.”

Eli said nervously, “I don’t know if I can— without the sensors, it’s going to be—“

“Everett,” Sheppard said quietly.

Young turned to look at him.

Sheppard met his gaze.

Young could feel what he wanted.

“Eli,” Young said.

“Yeah?”

“Up.”

“What?” Eli glanced at him in confusion.

“Up. Out of the chair. Now.”

“Are you—“

“Yes,” Young said.

He waited for Eli to stand. Eli kept his hands on the controls until Young had edged into his place.

The touchscreen was cool beneath Young’s fingers.

The bridge had gone silent.

He listened for the sound he had heard in Rush’s mind. High and not-human, like spectral insects whirring across ice fields. Chirping and curious and shivery and strange. The pitches changed as the ship rent the outermost currents of plasma. The bridge filled with eerie, licking tongues of light as charged particles struck Destiny’s shields, creating curtains of luminous red-gold and blue.

They had entered the coronasphere.

The shields struck very pure notes in unusual intervals, at strange and anxious speeds that made the music difficult to understand. They were trying to _become_ something against or perhaps in concord with the particulate onslaught, tangling and untangling themselves in and out of chords, in search of some arrangement in which they could be incorporated wholly, in which every part of them would resonate maximally at last, and Young, listening, was suddenly aware of his absolute aloneness— that he would never be part of something so vast and so encompassing, and he thought he could not bear it.

“This is why,” he murmured. “This is what it’s like for him.”

“This is only a _fraction_ of what he experiences,” Sheppard said.

Briefly, Young closed his eyes.

Sheppard said, “You can see the vector made by the plasma hitting the shields. Set that as zero, and make your angle of declination forty-five degrees.”

Young pitched the ship down, and the intervals changed. He understood on a visceral level now that the light and color and the sound were not separate: that they were all interrelated properties, that they were manifestations of matter interacting or _intra_ -acting, and he too was interacting with it, the movement of his hands enmeshed in some pattern they were making, and suddenly it was possible for him to perceive that he _was_ part of the ship, which in turn was part of the coronasphere, and they were all the organs of some vague and formless larger body, and it did not ameliorate his aloneness, but at the same time he felt somehow less sad, or perhaps he just felt closer to Rush, who had always known this.

Green and blue waves glowed against the shields everywhere the ship and the star touched.

“Almost,” Sheppard breathed. “Almost.”

Young felt the moment that the course locked in. It was a sense of absolute correctness in his body. But it came too with a sense of loss, because it meant that he would have to go now and be separate again, right at the point when he had felt that he was not separate any longer— that he fit into something in a way he had never fit before. But that wasn’t true, of course; he _hadn't_ been separate before, because he was reminded of the way that Rush’s mind came open to him; the lock that no other being in the universe could have opened, the key he became that was so perfectly cut to fit, and as he drew his hands slowly back from the screen, it was brought home to him for the first time that Rush was gone, and he could not breathe all of a sudden.

“Course is locked,” Chloe said quietly.

He got to his feet.

Brody said, “Collectors have lowered.”

He was fairly certain he was going to be sick.

“Everett,” Sheppard said.

It was the vertigo.

“Everett, are you all right?”

He couldn’t answer.

“Everett, when will we send the shuttle to go get him?”

He fumbled his way to the command chair.

“Everett, what if the Nakai send short-range craft to the planet?”

The world was bright at the edges and someone was touching him.

“Everett, why did he not pull out of the shuttle?”

He did not like to be touched.

“Everett, what if he has injured his mind?”

“I think I’m going to—“ Young managed.

There were a number of possible ends to the statement. But he did not achieve any of them.

His mind went dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Sed correlatiom physicom ne wideo_ = I don't see a physical correlate.  
>  _Quod cresdes?_ = What do you think?  
>  _Modo quod werthom lodi electronicom ne nomenevad felix es_ = Just be glad he didn't call it a video game name.  
>  _Ita facies_ = Yes, you do  
>  _Duena sent— ne potissum— deicere— numc— me penitet—_ = Everything's okay — I can't— talk— right now— sorry—


	54. The Two-Body Problem: Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is formatted in a way that makes it pretty much impossible to read on a mobile device. Sorry!

Let’s approach the nature of the immediate problem he is facing through the lens of the supertask, specifically the impossibility of motion, which Zeno conceptualized through the model of the runner who in order to cover a distance must first cover half that distance, in order to do which they must first cover half of that half-distance, and so first half of that quarter-distance, and so on to infinity, in other words an infinite number of finite distances, which would require an infinite time to complete, and so every object in the whole world must be holding absolutely still, and yes obviously on a practical level this can be easily disproven, for instance if one happens to be hurtling towards a tidally locked planet on board a ballistic shuttlecraft, but that is the common-sense approach to the dilemma and

he no longer operates according to the human cognitive processes that underlie common sense; his operations have become computational; for one his processing is no longer serial or should he say linear or should he say creates the subjective experience of linearity because is human cognitive processing really linear? Of course it fucking isn’t. So perhaps we’ll say that his consciousness is no longer strictly serial which, yes, he’ll admit that human consciousness typically is, but then his consciousness has always been different, those fucking standard deviations that define how many people in a given population someone is going to tolerate and how many are going to tolerate them, so it is all a matter of degrees, a question of magnification, and he had said this to Young, they had been sitting at a table, Young had made a joke, Young had touched his hand, and none of this is relevant but perhaps points towards another problematic issue, namely that his memory access is largely random at this point, meaning that everything is happening for him now, _now_ , always _now_ , or else in the undifferentiated past of storage, and if he wishes to sequence it then an effort has to be made, and frankly he expends so much fucking effort on being a human already that you’d think he’d be forgiven this one fucking thing but always _always_ someone wants him to situate himself according to some fucking metric and occasionally just occasionally there is an immediate practical need to do so for instance when one is hurtling towards a tidally locked planet on board a ballistic shuttlecraft and it is necessary to mark time in a linear serial moving-forwards manner so that he can hierarchize events

and ordinarily Destiny would do this for him because its architecture rests upon regularity, or if he was amusing himself he could do it according to Young’s steady breaths or heartbeats for instance if he was lying in bed with his face pressed to Young’s sturdy chest, because Young doesn’t ever waver, not like Nicholas Rush, whose frenetic little heart sometimes beats too fast for cognition, who can’t even regulate his own body’s heat, who is too quick for his own fucking brain after David’s fucking laboratory, but too slow to ever save any of them, which he cannot think about right now, it would be highly non-optimal, because he does not know what happened to Scott and— well, so, he is going to use the voltage and velocity differentials to measure time by because it is necessary for him to measure time because his current situation is one in which the limits of time are highly deterministic which is to say that they define possible outcomes in a very imminent way and in this case the imminent outcome he is concerned with is his imminent death because he is hurtling towards a fucking tidally locked planet on board this ballistic fucking shuttlecraft and already this is creating another salient fucking problem

and the nature of this second problem is his panic or not-panic or perhaps it is a type of panic; he does not know its category; yes all right he panics, he is prone to panic, not in the sense that he worries about things, but in the sense that there are situations he just cannot be in, there are circumstances his body will not accommodate, and it’s not fucking _trauma_ , right, he’s not fucking _traumatized_ , he’s not _scared_ , he’s not a child who hasn’t learnt how to interface with the world yet, fuck what they think, _fuck_ all of them, it’s an existential condition of _not wanting to be restrained_ , is what it is, which anyone could understand, _anyone_ , it’s perfectly logical and consistent, and as for the water, that has a rational etiology, and the point is— the point is— he panics, he does, but since the laboratory he also has these instants at which his cognition briefly outstrips the organic architecture of his brain and he _does not know how_ he arrives at certain impulses or feelings and he _does not know how_ to compensate for them and it’s not that he would call it disturbing exactly, but “negative” is the accurate term for its net effect on him and he has perhaps become overly dependent on the availability of certain persons to say Nick you’re all right Nick I’ve got you Nick you just need to breathe and without that he will not breathe and he will give into this panic-not-panic and that would certainly, certainly, be suboptimal in his current situation so he is going to have to devise an alternative plan and so for an interval of time that encompasses a distance traveled through three-dimensional space at a measurable velocity he pictures a bowl of marbles and numbers the marbles with primes because primes have always been calming to him and

2 3

3 5 7

5 7 11 13

7 11 13 17 19

11 13 17 19 23 29

13 17 19 23 29 31 37

17 19 23 29 31 37 41 43

19 23 29 31 37 41 43 47 53

23 29 31 37 41 43 47 53 59 61

29 31 37 41 43 47 53 59 61 67 71

and this too is a supertask which at the moment he finds soothing, not just the simple and repetitive nature of the numbers but the fact that there is no resolution; there are two solutions, both flawed, so one has to set aside the solution and simply count the numbers, and the situation he is in is a situation in which there is no solution: optimal outcomes are not available and so he must keep moving because that is the only outcome available to him and that has _always_ been what he was doing just fucking _moving moving moving_ in those infinitesimal segments of distance refusing to ever fucking remain still

but at the moment moving is at the core of his third significant problem and this is why he reaches down and hooks his fingers under the panelling of the shuttle and he thinks at it _Te solue, megei cognosces, ne pave, Fati ‘som, te solue_ , and a hidden catch depresses, and he pulls the panelling away, with its bevelled keys and its interface for humans, and he shoves his hands into the raw circuitry and he converts his own energy and mass into the pure electrical current that the poor little half-fried shuttle can use to do what he wants it to do, and it is very difficult to manage this and retain any type of control over his chemical processes and so immediately he starts to feel very cold but his hands are warm and the shuttle is warm and the shuttle is less frightened and the shuttle licks at him with crackling algorithmic curiosity and he thinks _Ita, megei cognosces, te deicevam_ , and it clings to him because it is hurt and it does not want to be alone and he does not want to be alone either and then they are not being alone because he is being the shuttle a little bit

and Young does not like this of course because Young has these peculiar fucking notions about where the boundaries of a person ought to lie and how permeable the boundaries of a person ought to be which is frankly fucking ironic or _is_ it ironic because he’s the one who did what he did to Young it’s not like Young wanted it to happen so yes it is probably not ironic it is probably just a fucking tragedy, but Young regardless is trying to enforce those boundaries in the most ironic manner which is to say by shoving himself into Rush’s brain and as is his fucking wont he’s thinking _Meyos meyos meyos_ or probably he is thinking it in English but parsing language right now is not a priority, the point is that Rush is _not_ fucking _eos_ and to be annexed like this fills him with dread, it is too much like things that are _not relevant_ because the past is _not relevant_ which is why random access memory is not a hardship for him; the past is over, it’s done with, it can’t be altered, you’re just going to have to live with it Nick, so he sequesters those thoughts and tries to be a person long enough to project something reassuring at Young, and he lets Young hold him still for a long moment because that is what Young wants and has always wanted, to hold him [still], to hold him _still_ , and sometimes, just sometimes, that’s almost intolerably restful, those instances when _holding him still_ doesn’t mean _holding him down_ , but right now Young is freezing entire muscle groups in his body, terror like a biochemical force that paralyzes him, and

what does Young think, that Rush wants to be [in] this fucking shuttle? No. Fuck him. What’s done is done and he cannot alter it and emotion is unproductive in all of the ways that matter right now so he pushes unintelligible waves of pleading at Young, just enough so that Young releases him for a length of time that is adequate for him to interface with the aft thrusters and fire and alter their trajectory and

now the fucking AI is at it and he understands, he _does_ understand, he’s not the heartless bastard that everyone thinks, or is he? is he? How would he know when he is the only person he’s ever been excepting Young perhaps but even then he was not Young per se but Young as part of something other, the person they make when they turn into _them_ , so really he does not know what having a heart feels like for other people and so perhaps it is true that he’s a bastard and he’s heartless but still he understands what the AI is afraid of, he knows that without him it will rewrite its code into nothingness, become what it meant to make itself, something empty and invulnerable, closed off against the agonizing inroads of emotion, and how he could he not understand that? And as for Young and his fear, well, Young isn’t heartless, so perhaps he will simply become heartless, that would be the best outcome, maybe it would be better than the long slow crime that Rush is already committing against him and frankly Rush cannot contemplate that or any other outcomes or Everett in general at this exact instant because it would cause an unsustainable amount of distress

and he is distressed enough already trying to control the fucking trajectory and considering its potential endpoints, how arcing into the light or dark zones on this tidally locked planet would not be ideal because they would hit the sea and they might survive the impact but would Greer survive the water and how cold would the water be and for Rush to be in the water would be _less_ than ideal, it would be— he would prefer to burn up in the atmosphere but perhaps that would not be Greer’s choice

and perhaps Greer should not be allowed to make a choice because right now he is making the idiotic fucking choice to unbuckle himself in order to buckle Rush into his own seat in spite of the turbulence in spite of the abrupt changes in velocity as they descend towards the planet’s surface and in spite of the fact that Rush is doing this _for him_ and it’s hardly Rush’s fault that he can’t move or speak, that he can’t move or speak with the shuttle pulling him forwards and Young pulling him backwards, that frankly there’s not enough of him to fucking go around so Greer should just wait his fucking turn instead of doing up the fucking buckles because if he dies when the shuttle crashes the buckles won’t matter; Rush will be _fucked_ because he is already starting to feel Young and the AI fading and that means he is already starting to feel

wrong

and Greer keeps shouting his name like he might forget it but he _knows_ he has a name, he _knows_ he is a thing that has a name even if he’s not entirely sure what kind of a thing that is because he’s not doing very well at holding himself together because that is what he has Everett and the AI for; without them around to remind him who he is, the walls the walls come tumbling down; without them, he just doesn’t quite hold water; what a peculiar expression, why is he attracted to it, is it because he doesn’t know if he’s the water that they’re trying to hold, or if he is just the broken thing that can’t manage to hold it, that they have to shore up constantly with their sturdy hands, and if that’s the case then what is the water and why does he have the inconsolable fear that they’re doing this but there’s no water inside him, it leaked out when they weren't looking and they're too late, or there was never any water, and either way there's nothing left

nothing, because Gloria’s screaming is cut off and the last thing he feels is the ghost of Young’s fingertips digging into him so hard they should leave a bruise, and then nothing, nothing, he is so lightheaded he could vomit, he is dizzy and wholly without restraint, and he is a shuttle and no he is not a shuttle because he is something that has a name, so he is a shuttle and not a shuttle, he is damaged and burning and he hurts, there is too much of him to fit inside his body but he is missing pieces, he needs more space inside his head, there are too many algorithms, swarms of data he can’t process like a murmuration of starlings have you ever seen them move they look like one body a conscious thing emergent behavior but of course they’re not they’re just a collection of birds but does that make them any less a

he is

he needs _Destiny_ he can’t

process

he is he’s going to _be the shuttle_ because

                    it 

_loves_ him

 

and he is not going to leave it

 

so he is the shuttle

 

 

 

 

 

            the shuttle is scared

 

  

he is feeding it himself because it needs him or they or he need needs himbut it is going tocost him

 

but he always says

  

yes

the problem with that approach is

 

  

what happens when they drink all the water?

 

I’m not an animal in the

 

the shuttle isalive

 

 

 

 

                            the shuttle hurts

 

the shuttle is going todie

 

 

it is going to

 

 

the shuttle isgoing todie

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the shuttle is scared

Young’s fear in slow dark inertial waves.

 

 

Shit, Doc, what the hell are you doing? Greer deicet.  
Nothing. Don’t worry about it.  
I’m pretty fucking worried about it!

 

  _He lets Young mostly carry his weight as they lurch towards the bed. Terms, he mumbles. No telling what to do._  
_Nope. Maybe if you had, like, even a tablespoon of common sense._

 

Gloria deicet, You will have to compensate for the navigational failure by interfacing with the shuttle directly.  
_ Scio. Id facieso. _

 

Alarms sound at **1700 Hz**.

 

 _Once you exceed a certain number of standard deviations from the mean, you can’t really avoid a difference in thought that is both objective and subjective, so your primary assumption was well-founded if incorrect. The electrophysiological adjustment… magnified many extant issues._  
  
_To be fair, Young says, some of those signs are pretty confusing._  
  
_ Young’s hand is— warm._

 

**error_entratos.sperevandos.ne.recepiontor  
error_exsequi.ne.potuissetor **

 

 

//Nick.//

 Young feels—

** 3200 Hz. **

How come the displays are back, but I’m locked out? Rush! Rush, talk to me here!

 

Nick, please come back. Nick, I wish you would please come back. You are too far!

  

 ** CAVE_PERICOLOM.STRUOTURAS **  
** error_retrahe.detransduce.rescribe**  
** CAVE_SUSTEMA.LENTIFICANS.**

 ** error_centrifica.unifica.operandi:werifacie **  

 _ because water was its own restraint, because he did not like the water, and consequently the water made it difficult for him to think, and that was good, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it good? Because he could not access the information they needed; it was all just a branching web of water, the underwater smell of the kitchen and the river where he choked and David saying I’m glad I got to be here I’m glad I got to do this don’t fight this Nick _

_ he was holding it together he was supremely good at holding it together, he was just finding it very very difficult to breathe and he thought maybe he had stopped breathing or that was the other time in the laboratory under the water and had he stopped breathing then? He didn’t remember and that was all right because sometimes he did not form memories and that was— fine, that was fine, that didn’t— make __his hands go cold colder than they were _

**error_retrahe.detransduce.rescribe**  

 _You’re okay. I got you. Strong, remember? I got you. Just hang in there. I promise everything’s going to seem a whole lot better once you rest. Okay?  _

 

 

  _For the purposes of the gedankenexperiment, let us assume the marbles come with the numbers in._  
_Gedankenexperiment? Chloe says, laughing. You’re so pretentious. _

 

 

 

 

  

 

 _Can we determine what the state of the world is after the supertask’s completion? _  

 

 ** desideratos: envuenie_ceristor.waledos **  
** scioscents…**  
** scioscents…**  
** scioscents…**

  

Rush, I’m freaking out a little bit here. I need you to talk to me.

 

 **se weros/tom… weros?neumCAVE_SUSTEMA.DEESSET:WERIFACIE**  

//Nick.//

Duena sent— esmithet ad Young ne potissum— deicere— numc— me penitet—

  

Nick, please don’t leave me. Nick, you’re too far. You’re _too far._  

**  
se weros/tom… weros?neumCAVE_SUSTEMA.DEESSET:WERIFACIE  **

 

   

 

  
_I interfaced you with the ship. You didn’t have the right hardware. Your operating system couldn’t function. It’s why you were unable to move. Unable to speak. _

Modo ab Young sensom pavique refutandi et Neum conagitet Neum neum meyos est; et Rush deicet Me mithe, tegei me mithendos est, quaesso, quaesso, quaesso, me penitet, Everett, tegei me mithendos est, quaesso— 

Sonos suonet  
** 1300 Hz **

_His skin crawls under that soft, proprietorial contact_

 _ —It’s your problem now, isn’t it? What I do to my exceptionally precious body. _   
_ —I could really learn to like this idea. _

_—You know what they call you at the Mountain? My pet scientist. Don’t worry; I made sure they know you’re my pet mathematician._  
_—Fuck you, David._  
_—But you make such a good pet._  
  
 — _Protect? Fuck you. Protect? Control._  
_— No protect as in protect_

  

 _Misra and Sudarshan suggest that continuous monitoring of an unstable atom is a Zeno-like supertask in which it is implied, contrary to physical law, that the atom will never decay. _

 

Nick, please! Nick, please do not leave me! Nick, I will  _not_  let you go!  
Nick please please please I will not  _let_ you!

Et AI em possedere conator sed—

 

 

Sonos suonet  
** 2100 Hz **

 

 

Nick! You must pull out of the shuttle! It will damage your mind if it crashes while you are joined with it!

 

 

 

_ He pulls back and pushes Rush under the water _

 

Damnit, Doc, you are a pain in the ass. Now I gotta get you strapped in, huh? Can’t even buckle your seatbelt. Don’t worry about it, though. I got you.

  **error_retrahe.detransduce.rescribe**  
****error_retrahe.detransduce.rescribe****

Nick, pull out of the shuttle! You  _must_ pull out!

//Nick. Pull away from the shuttle. Pull _out_. It’s going to _crash_ , and if it crashes with your mind in it—// 

Nick! _Nick!_ Listen to him! Pull out! Pull _out_ of the shuttle!

Rush! Greer deicet. Rush! Rush!  

 

** CAVE_PERICOLOM.STRUOTURAS **

**error_retrahe.detransduce.rescribe  
error_centrifica.unifica.operandi:werifacie  ** 

  

 

 

  

_Nothing real. Nothing. Inside here.  _

      

_ Don’t use me to hurt yourself I don’t want you to get hurt_

Nick Nick please do not leave me Nick please please ne discede ne me discede quaesso tegei epnins asterins aureons dideso se modo revuenias quaesso—

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Te solue, megei cognosces, ne pave, Fati ‘som, te solue_ = Open, you know me, don't be afraid, I'm [of] Destiny, open
> 
>  _Ita, megei cognosces, te deicevam_ = Right, you know me, I told you
> 
>  _Meyos_ = mine
> 
>  _eos_ = his
> 
>  _deicet_ = says
> 
>  _Id facieso._ = I'm going to.
> 
>  _esmithet_ = he sends
> 
>  _Modo ab Young sensom pavique refutandi et Neum conagitet Neum neum meyos est_ = From Young only a sense of fear and refusal and No [Young] thinks No no he's mine
> 
>  _Et Rush deicet Me mithe, tegei me mithendos est, quaesso, quaesso, quaesso, me penitet, Everett, tegei me mithendos est, quaesso—_ = And Rush says Let me go, you have to let me go, please, please, I'm sorry, Everett, you have to let me go, please—
> 
>  _Sonos suonet_ = Alarms sound
> 
>  _Et AI em possedere conator sed—_ = And the AI tries to hold onto him
> 
>  _ne discede ne me discede quaesso tegei epnins asterins aureons dideso se modo revuenias quaesso_ = Don't leave don't leave me please I'll give you all the gold stars if you just come back please


	55. The Two-Body Problem: Part 2

Before anything else, Greer hears and smells the water. It reminds him of being briefly stationed in Japan, where everyone was real into those little water features, and all the places people said were good to go visit had some kind of stream running through them. It’s a sound that’s supposed to be peaceful, like a happy-little-springtime burbling brook, but it’s always just made Greer think of therapists’ waiting rooms. Is there a special store where therapists go to buy their electric indoor fountains and noise machines, the ones that’re supposed to stop you hearing about everybody else’s shitty lives while you wait for your Corps-mandated Saturday afternoon appointment so you can talk about your _own_ shitty life? He kind of likes to imagine there is. Just a whole store full of aging dudes with patchy hair and wire-rimmed glasses and white ladies who own a lot of African art, shopping for all their inspirational posters and other therapist accoutre-fucking-ments.

The point is that he’s never found the sound of running water to be all that goddamn pleasant. In fact, it kind of stresses him out. And the smell of water just makes him think of leaky base houses, the kind in storm-prone areas with ceilings that sag.

So he wakes up not feeling real fucking optimistic, is what he’s saying.

He opens his eyes and stares for a little bit.

Everything’s purple.

 _Deep_ purple.

Not deep purple like the band. Deep purple like the dusk way down South, maybe in August or September, that thick low velvety _this-_ close-to-nightfall dusk, almost black where the shadows collect.

The air tastes damp. Smoky, and a little bit like blood and metal.

He remembers the shuttle crash.

His first instinct is to jolt forward, but his military training kicks in at the last second and he stays still, sliding his eyes from side to side and trying to figure out the situation.

Purple air. Running water. The gleaming sides of the shuttle, crumpled like a fistful of tinfoil wrap. He’s alive. His heart’s pounding. He’s slung sideways, tangled up in his safety straps. Something’s maybe not right about the gravity on this goddamn planet. He feels too heavy, although maybe the crash is messing with his head. Is he injured? Hard to tell. Head’s not really hurting, so he has a go at turning it to one side and sees Rush: unconscious, with his hands still buried in the goddamn circuitry.

“Rush,” he says out loud.

Rush doesn’t react.

Wincing, Greer tries to pull himself free of the straps in a way that’s not going to end with him face-first in some alien river, filled with who knows what kind of nasty-ass alien fish. He’s heard the stories; he’s not about to go getting some throwback flesh-eating worm-snake-dinosaur spine lizard all crawling around in his goddamn brain. So pardon him if he’s a little careful, especially when he checks out his legs and sees that a three-inch chunk of shuttle has managed to get embedded in the flesh of his leg. Blood in the water— that’s all he needs.

He gets ahold of the metal and pulls it free, which, sure, is medically not the best idea, but he’s more on board with the “getting out of this damn shuttle” plan than with the “hang out here waiting till someone from Destiny shows up, and hope whatever Bigfoot Mothmen wolf aliens live on this planet don’t come out at night” plan.

 _Is_ it night?

His leg is bleeding an awful lot. But he manages to get himself free of the straps, and crawls over to check out Rush. Rush has a pulse, which is a good start, and really cold, which isn’t, but he doesn’t look like _he’s_ bleeding. Which is good. There’s the whole circuitry thing, and Greer hadn’t known what was going on with that even when the shuttle was in motion— it definitely wasn’t just a mindmeld-type thing, because there was, like, _light_ and _heat_ , like Rush was _plugged into_ _it_ somehow. But for now he might as well assume that Rush is basically okay, even if—

Rush opens his eyes.

Greer jumps back, just out of reflex.

Rush stares at the open circuitry panel.

“Uh, hey, Doc,” Greer says. “You okay?”

Rush doesn’t respond.

“Hey,” Greer says again. “Doc? You good?”

Rush just keeps staring at the circuits, like Greer hasn’t spoken.

Greer reaches out tentatively to touch his shoulder.

Rush jerks violently away from him, shoving himself against the side of the shuttle and drawing his knees up to his chest, shivering convulsively and making a frightened, animal-like noise.

“Whoa,” Greer says, holding his hands up. “It’s just me. Just me. Greer, right?”

Rush doesn't seem to recognize him.

“Remember? Greer?”

Nothing.

“We were in the shuttle? It crashed?”

Rush looks back at the exposed circuitry.

“Yeah,” Greer says slowly. “It crashed. But it’s cool. We’re cool.”

He’s getting the sense that Rush is _not_ basically okay. That while Rush might not be bleeding, he’s the furthest thing from okay. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot Greer can do about that at the moment except keep talking and hope Rush starts to chill out a little bit. Not literally chill out, because the shivering thing already has Greer a little worried. But just… maybe give Greer a thumbs up or a middle finger, some sign that he’s in there.

“We crashed,” Greer says, keeping his voice casual, “and _one_ of us didn’t have his seatbelt on.”

He wishes that at least Rush wouldn’t look so scared.

“Which, you know, I’m pretty sure that’s a ticketable offense in California _and_ Colorado, and probably in Scotland, if you guys even have cars there— I bet you’ve got those little Soviet cars, like maybe some Seventies models, an Opel or some shit. Probably don’t need a seatbelt with that. But in the States— man, and you’re gonna get your ass arrested if you ever get pulled over, because I _know_ you would try to argue with the cop.”

It’s not totally clear to Greer that Rush understands anything he’s saying.

“But,” Greer says, “lucky for _you_ , I am very public safety minded, and I got you all strapped in. So now we’re both here, in one piece, on this holiday hotspot of a planet that looks a little bit like some kind of down-home South Carolina evening, which, not going to lie, kind of gives me the chills, because I am _not_ a country boy. You know what I mean? There better not be any mosquitos. You think there’s any mosquitos?”

Rush still isn’t looking at him, but he seems a little bit less freaked out.

“So what do you say?” Greer says. “You want to go check out South Carolina, maybe?”

Carefully, he tries reaching towards the buckle of Rush’s straps.

Rush jerks backwards again, huddling into himself and breathing hard.

Greer backs off. “Okay,” he says. “Okay. I get it. No touching. I should’ve guessed that. I know; it’s, like, your golden rule. You know, I told Scott a while back that if we were back on Earth, I’d get someone to make one of those little plush dolls— you know the ones I mean? I’d have them make it look just like you, and it’d have a little string you pulled, and when you pulled the string it’d say, _Don’t touch me!_ And then maybe sometimes it’d say _Fuck you!_ or _I don’t need your help!_ Which, I got to break it to you, is definitely not true. That last one. I feel like right now you kind of need some help.”

Rush’s gaze drifts back to the exposed circuitry . After a minute, he reaches out and rests his hands against it.

“See,” Greer says. “The thing is, I really think it’d be a lot better for us to get out of this wreckage, especially since my leg’s bleeding all over. But I also don’t want to have to drag you out of here, cause it seems to me like you’re maybe not feeling the best.”

Rush strokes his hands over the circuits very lightly, almost as though he’s petting them.

“Uh. Yeah.”

The shuttle creaks a little as it moves in a gust of wind.

Greer looks around uneasily. He’s not sure if it’s night, but _feels_ like night. He can’t hear any birds or insects, and maybe this planet just doesn’t have any of them, but the quiet still gives him some kind of Jurassic Park chills. Like: when the small things go quiet, that’s when the big thing’s coming. The small things are always smarter. They got to be. Just look at Rush.

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s try another tactic. _Salhwes?_ ”

Rush’s eyes flick over to him.

“Yeah? _Me tenes?_ ”

It takes Rush a while, but he nods hesitantly.

“Good. Uh, _duenos est._ I kind of hope you understand English, though, because I’m going to run out of Ancient pretty fast.”

Rush’s eyes wander to the circuits again.

“Uh-uh. No way. I gotta be more interesting than a busted-up old shuttle. Come on. I really— I really need you to get it together here, Doc.” Greer tries not to sound agitated, or like the adrenaline is starting to ebb out of his system and the pain from his leg is starting to set in.  _”Ego_ _— duenos. Id—_ _ne_ _duenos_.” He points at the circuitry with an exaggerated frown and shakes his head.

An inconsolable look comes over Rush’s face. “ _Dolhet_ ,” he whispers.

“Yeah? Okay, so we’re talking now. That’s good. The shuttle? The shuttle hurts?”

Rush stares at the circuitry for a long time, still slowly petting it. When Greer’s just about given up on getting an answer, he says, “Yes.”

“Okay. Okay. That’s not good. For the shuttle. Or for us. Do you know what— uh, let’s see, _quor dolhet?_ Or—  _cubi dolhet?_ ”

Rush’s brow furrows. He seems to be struggling with something. Eventually he says, “The… shuttle. The shuttle?”

“Yes,” Greer says carefully. “The shuttle.”

Another long silence. “The shuttle is not…” Rush says, barely audible, and touches a hand to his own chest.

Greer waits for him to say something else, but he doesn’t.

“No,” Greer says uncertainly at last. “The shuttle’s not you.”

“No,” Rush whispers.

It’s not really clear if he’s echoing what Greer said, or agreeing, or— what he means by that.

“Are you—“ Greer says. “You want to tell me what's up with the whole—“ He gestures. “You know. Petting thing?”

Rush looks down at the circuitry, tracing the edge of it with a slow finger. He says softly, “It doesn’t understand what has happened to it.”

“The— shuttle,” Greer says, just— just to make sure they’re on the same page. “The shuttle doesn’t understand what’s happened to it.”

A pause.

Rush nods.

Greer’s kind of starting to think it isn’t the healthiest idea for Rush to be spending this much time with the shuttle. He _really_ thinks they need to get out of this wreckage, even if there’s alien fish, because at least Rush is going to know, presumably, that he’s not an alien fish or whatever, and that’s going to help him understand that he’s a human being, and Greer doesn’t think that kind of clarity’s really happening at the moment.

“Do _you_ understand what’s happened to the shuttle?” Greer asks. “What’s, uh, wrong with it?”

Once again, Rush seems like he’s thinking. Greer has to wait almost two minutes for an answer. “Warped toric joints,” Rush says. “And—“

He pauses.

“And?” Greer says.

Rush says, “And I destroyed its central processor.”

“So we’re not going to be able to fix it,” Greer says.

“No,” Rush says.

“So we’re going to need to be rescued?”

“No.”

“O…kay,” Greer says, not sure what to make of that reply. “Well, I’m pretty sure that Colonel Young is going to come try to rescue you anyway.”

Rush closes his eyes at the mention of Young’s name. He raises a halting hand to his chest and fumbles for something around his neck. In the dim purple light, Greer can just make out the silver flash of a pair of military issue dog tags before Rush’s hand closes tightly around them.

“Oh,” Greer says quietly. “Those his?”

Rush nods haltingly.

“So you don’t need me to tell you he’s coming.”

Rush shakes his head.

“He’s probably getting his whole team together right now. TJ, Scott, Eli, James… hell, everybody likes you now. You kind of ruined that whole sinister image you had going on.”

Rush doesn’t say anything.

“So what do you say we make things easy for them and transmit a signal? Show them where we are? So they can find us?”

Rush’s head jerks back like he’s been slapped. His hands go to his sides and clench into fists. “So they can find us,” he echoes.

“Yeah,” Greer says slowly. “So they can find us.”

For a long time, Rush doesn’t say anything. He just sits there, shaking with the cold or whatever else is going on with him.

There’s something in his face that makes Greer feel really fucking uneasy.

“Greer,” Rush whispers finally.

“That’s me,” Greer says, glad that at least they’re both clear on that much.

“Do you know what it feels like to be vivisected?”

In the silence that follows his question, Greer can hear water leaking into the shuttle somewhere, drip-drip-dripping like little footsteps echoing through a cave a thousand miles under the earth.

Greer has a sudden powerful urge to grab Rush and just drag him out of there, just get the hell out as fast as he can, and maybe not stop running till they’re on a fucking hilltop or some shit, someplace where he can see what’s coming and he knows what’s up with it, and he’s not sitting in this crumpled-up fucking shuttle at night in an alien river with the wind moaning in the metal siding and his blood leaking out into the water and Rush asking _do you know what it feels like to be vivisected?_ like that’s some kind of reasonable fucking question.

But he doesn’t. He controls himself. “No,” he says.

“Let’s keep it that way.”

It takes Greer a second to put the pieces together.

“You think if we transmit a signal,” he says, “that the Nakai are going to pick it up.”

Rush nods.

“Okay,” Greer says. “Okay. I got you. Okay.”

It’s really fucking _not_ okay. The wind’s picked up, and it’s making the whole shuttle tilt a little, back and forth, and outside the same wind is rustling through what’s probably trees but could be— shit. Shit. Who knows. Anything. The thick fur of a giant fucking bear monster, for all Greer knows. And it smells like blood and metal and water, and now Rush has got his hands back in the circuits, making a soft, hurt, almost whimpering noise under his breath, a noise that a _person_ wouldn’t make, and Greer is so fucking creeped out all of a sudden that he can’t take it anymore.

“Doc,” he says, “I know you’re not going to like this, but I think it’s time we got out of here.”

“No,” Rush says.

“Yeah,” Greer says. “Sorry. This is going to suck.”

He pretty much just goes for it, lunging forward and unbuckling Rush from his straps before Rush really even has a chance to react, then dragging him out of his seat and back into the aft compartment while Rush is just starting to gear up for a struggle. Around that point, Rush gets his act together, but he’s still out of it enough that he can’t quite pull off his usual cornered-alleycat tricks, which is good, because _damn_ the man can fight dirty when he wants to. As it is, he only manages to twist and squirm and bite at Greer’s arm, which, given that Greer’s wearing a tactical jacket, doesn’t really do him much good.

They burst through the ruined rear doors into a thick velvet twilight.

Water’s running underfoot. Not a river, really, just maybe four or five inches of shallow creek, bedded with rocks, but still enough of a river to send Rush into hysterics when they hit it, kicking and flailing and trying to get loose from Greer.

“Easy, Doc,” Greer pants. “I’m trying to get you _out_ of the water.”

“No,” Rush says, shoving a panicked hand in Greer’s face. “No, no, no, no, no–“

“ _Yes_. Come on.”

Rush doesn’t come on. He nails Greer right in his injured leg, which almost puts Greer down for the count. But Greer grits his teeth and gets ahold of Rush and heaves him up into a fireman’s carry.

“Sorry,” he says. “But you’re being a pain in the ass.”

Rush kind of goes limp against him once Greer’s got him over his shoulders, like he’s given up on fighting, and when Greer splashes through the rest of the shallow creek and sets him down on the bank, he sits there looking confused, like he’s trying to figure out what just happened to him.

Greer takes advantage of the pause to get a good look at what’s around them.

South Carolina seems okay. No obvious signs of people-eating monsters. Everything is just real quiet. Real purple-colored. Sort of bluish. There are trees. A big thick forest, primeval-looking, which only adds to the heebie-jeebie aura of Jurassic Park, with the wide creek trickling over lots and lots of pale limestone, and the weird dark of a sky without stars. But Greer’ll take the lack of monsters. He’ll take it.

“What do you think, Doc?” he asks.

Rush blinks up at him from the rocky bank.

“You doing good? You hurt?”

No response.

“ _Tegei dolhet_?” Greer tries.

Mostly Rush still looks confused. Slowly, he raises a hand to his head. “Too much data,” he says at last. “And insufficient processing power.”

“Okay,” Greer says. “Well, that’s English, at least. Let’s try and stick with the English. What do you say?”

“Greer,” Rush says.

“Yup,” Greer says. “Still me.”

“I do not like the water.”

“I know,” Greer says. “I know. But, hey, you’re out of the water now, right? And you don’t have to go back in there. I’ll get all the gear out of the shuttle. You just stay here all nice and dry and— you know— sort out your shit.”

Rush doesn’t say anything. He gazes up at Greer, his eyes wide and dark.

Greer sighs and sits down next to him. He deserves a minute to catch his breath, he thinks. “I’m not too hot on water either,” he says. “It’s supposed to be all peaceful. But mostly it just makes it hard to know what’s coming at you. Like— I don’t know. Sharks. Crazy fish. I think that’s why those therapists’ waiting rooms always made me so damn nervous. You know what I’m talking about?”

“ _Ne te teneo,”_ Rush says.

“Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. You’ll figure it out. You just got to put the pieces together. Everything got all rattled around up in there.” Greer reaches out and taps Rush on the forehead.

Rush jerks back, but instead of looking scared, he frowns at Greer with an expression of exasperated outrage that’s so much like his normal self it makes Greer hurt.

“That’s right,” Greer says. “See? Is that something a shuttle could do? I don’t think so. That’s one hundred percent you. Classic Rush.”

“One hundred percent me,” Rush echoes. 

“Yup.”

“Greer,” Rush says.

“Yeah?”

“What if I am not one hundred percent me?”

He isn't looking at Greer. He's staring down at where he's got Young's dog tags tangled around his hand again.

“You know what?” Greer says, after a pause. “That's fine. Don't worry about it. I mean, we work with what we got. Can’t nobody ask for more than that. Right?”

Rush nods almost imperceptibly. "Thank you," he whispers.

“No problem, man,” Greer says. “No problem."

He reaches out carefully and puts a hand on Rush's back. He kind of expects Rush to shove him off or slap at him, but Rush doesn't. If anything, Rush seems to relax a little bit.

"No problem," Greer repeats gently. "You know what? Let's just sit right here for a minute.”

So they sit right there for a minute, Greer's hand resting between Rush's trembling shoulders. They listen to the eerie absence of birds and insects, and the wrecked shuttle creaking mournfully in the water. A sad little bit of smoke is rising from it, and they look at that, and they look out at the purple air of the unchanging twilight, its empty sky very high and very far off over the tops of the trees.


	56. The Two-Body Problem: Part 3

There are—

 

 

 

                                                                         Water.

 

                                                               He doesn’t—

 

 

 

 

 

The—

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                    shuttle?

 

Em dolhet— cubi?

 

 

 

 

The nature of his problem—

  

“So we’ve got, like, a million dollars’ worth of  
fancy tools and kinos back there, which are  
_all_ just A-OK, look how surprised I am, but  
nothing in the way of—“

 

 

 

is a dictionary problem.

 

  

 

But.

 

He does not have enough processing power to—

 

“—and I know your opinions about the American  
military-industrial blah-blah-blah but frankly  
Doc it seems like the American military-industrial  
blah-blah-blah keeps on saving your damn ass  
so maybe—“

 

 

Too much data.

 

 

 

 

Not enough metadata.

 

  

“—and you _know_ how I feel about that. If I have  
to use my _knife_ to fight some big old hairy-ass  
South Carolina bear monster, then I’m personally  
going to revoke Eli’s fucking—“

 

  

 

And what language —  
En quad denguad fathlator—

  

 

 

 

The shuttle is afraid et en acuad estque  
is caica estque pavdus estque neum caica  
n’estque en acuad n’est sed he remem-  
bers being the shuttle not being the  
shuttleque altera res sents memonator-  
que

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                              Static.

 

 

 

 

He can’t. He _can’t_. He can't he can't he can't he can't he

 

“You’re okay,” Young says. “You’re okay. I got you.”

 

 

                                                                     His RAM disk is—

 

 

 

 

 

 

If he could just.

 

 

 

 

                                 His brain—

 

_The electrophysiological adjustment magnified many extant issues._

‘I believe that he is suffering.’  
—Do I also _believe_

 _I’m dependent on the CPU for a significant fraction of_  

that he isn’t an automaton?

_my cognitive—_

If he could just—

 

 

 

“I don’t want to stress you out,” Young says,  
“but you remember those questions I’m always  
asking you? Name, date, location? That  
kind of thing?”

 

                                                                                      He—

 

 

“Hey, Doc, can you give me a hand here?” Greer asks him.

  

Memonator.

 

 _“Can you tell me your name?”_  
_“Nick.”_  
_“Do you know where you are?”_  
_“Destiny.”_  
_“What year is it?_  
_“Which calendar are you using?”_

                                Ich weiss, dass ich ein Mensch bin.  
                                Nicht wahr?  

 _“I want to hear your name,” he says and he_  
_will not look at Rush why will he not— “Date._  
_Location. Now.”_

 

 

He flinches. 

       He does not think that Young is actually here.  
                  If Young were actually here, Young would touch him.  
        He would not be scared if Young touched him.  
     Even though he does not like to be touched.

 _Duenos? Tangeo?_  
_Yes._

              Weiss ich, oder  
              glaube ich nur  
              dass ich… heisse?

_Nick._

I know this is my name;  
among us any grown-up  
knows what his name

_Nick._

             is Don’t I seem to know  
             that I can’t be wrong about  
             such a thing as my own name

_Nick._

                                                Wenn das falsch ist  
                                                dann bin ich verrückt

 

 

He is ninety-five percent certain that he is Nicholas Rush.

 

 

“That’s good,” Young says. “You’re doing good. What  
about the other two questions? You feeling up  
to tackling those?”

“No,” Rush whispers. 

“Aw, come on,” Greer says. “I’m doing all the heavy  
lifting. You’re over there having a day at the beach.”

Hawaii.

  

“That’s okay. Don’t worry about it right now,” Young says. 

 He is Nicholas Rush and he does not  
know what calendar he is using and  
         he is over here having a day at the beach.  
                   The beach is chalky and made of rocks the color  
                              of a piece of ivory scrimshaw in the Pitt Rivers Museum.  
                               He does not know what that means but that is the color.  
         The rocks are not alive.  
The sky is purple.  
           This is the twilight band.  
                 He was the shuttle when he came here and now  
                he is not the shuttle because the shuttle is not.  
It is not happening anymore.  
   He is alive and the shuttle is not alive.  
It was afraid and now it is not afraid  
even though it is in the water and—

“You’re really fucked up, huh, Nick?” David says. He is  
standing on the shoreline where the shallow water  
touches the toes of his boots and he is smoking a  
cigarette. He says, “I mean, you were always  
pretty fucked up. I kind of liked it. It was adorable.  
It made you really easy to use. Still does, as a matter of  
fact. This, though— this is just fucking pathetic.” 

“Please don’t talk to me,” Rush says. 

“Oh, please. You love it when I talk to you. You’re  
always crawling around after my attention. Any-  
one’s attention. Anyone who’ll give you the time  
of day. You don’t care if they like you, but Christ,  
you’re not going to let them fucking ignore you.” 

“I don’t want you to be here.” 

“I’m _not_ fucking here. Don’t be an idiot. How could I  
actually be here? Your boyfriend locked me in my  
quarters so I couldn’t feel you up when he wasn’t  
looking, so: thanks for that. Now I’m facing charges  
for trying to save the whole fucking crew, when you’re  
only alive because of me. And _I’m_ the one who  
gets tarred and feathered.” 

“Greer,” Rush says, getting to his feet. 

“I’m not done talking to you,” David says. 

“Greer. I will give you a hand.” 

“You’ll give anyone a _hand_ ,” David says  
contemptuously. “As long as you get  
what you want in exchange.”

 _It’s just a game_ _Nick I_  
_thought you_ _liked playing games._  
_I’m not fucking amused_ _anymore_  
_Come on I thought you_ _wanted_  
_your clearance_ _expedited_  
_I’m not going to_  
_Tell me how much you_ _want it_  
_The clearance or_  
_Let’s see if you_  
_can beg for both_  
_at the same time_

Greer is carrying an object back from the shuttle.  
He gives Rush a cautious look.  
“You talking to me now, Doc?” he says.

“Of course I’m talking to you. You're the only one here.” 

“It just seemed like you might be talking to someone else.” 

“No,” Rush says. “Of course not." 

He is not crazy. 

_You are very upset right now. You are not thinking clearly._

                   Was aber ist der Unterschied  
                   zwischen Irrtum und  
                   Geisterstörung?

  He is _not_ crazy.

“Well, let me run get the med kit,” Greer says,  
“and you can keep me company while I deal with  
this big fucking hole your pal the shuttle dug in my leg.”

Then he is gone and Rush is alone because there is 

                                   no

                                          one

                                                     in

                                                              his

                                                                       head

 and he can tell where Destiny is.  
  He can feel it like he is a fish and  
     it has put a little silver hook in him  
      or is it the fish and he is the fisher-  
man because he is having a day  
at the beach after all.

_Were you baiting me?_

                   There was a man who dreamt he was  
                   a starship and when he woke he did not

_What were you planning to do if you caught me?_

                   know if he was a man who had dreamt he was  
                   a starship or a starship dreaming he was a man

_It depends on what the fisherman wants with the fish._

  
      One of them is the fish because one  
          of them is far far out in the dark water  
    and he would prefer if he were not  
      the fish and he would prefer it if he  
          knew which things on this beach were  
       real and which things were not real.

 

He's _not crazy_.

 _Tamara, you have to believe me. I’m not psychotic_  
_I mean— fuck. I’m not insane. I’m not insane_  
_please, please, I’m not psychotic; I’m perfectly rational_

 He’s not going to let them—

 David takes a drag off his cigarette. “I always figured  
you’d end up losing it completely,” he says. “Especially  
after the lab. God, I really fucked you up good, huh?  
Young was right, you know. I was just trying to keep  
to a tight schedule. You realize you never even  
asked me why? You probably guessed.” 

Rush closes his eyes.

If David is not real then he does not matter.  
Only things that have matter matter and only  
things that have matter are strictly _real_  
leaving aside the question of energy of course.

But if David is not real then possibly  
he is crazy; he does not know what  
the other possibilities would be, and the  
possibility that concerns him is

what if something happened to Young 

the possibility that his mind is damaged  
somehow and there are a number of  
ways that this could occur, for instance

what if something happened to Young

if something happened to—

“Don’t think about it,” Young says gently. “It’s  
not going to help for you to think about it.  
Focus on what’s happening right now, okay,  
genius? That’s what I want you to do. Can  
you do that for me?”

Rush nods jerkily. 

“God damn,” Greer says. “I hope  
I got a tetanus booster sometime  
in the last seven years. Although  
they probably got some nasty-ass  
alien tetanus out here. Figures.”

“Figures,” Rush echoes tentatively. 

  He is focusing on what’s happening  
right now. What’s happening right  
     now is that Greer is holding an object  
   and engaging in conversation. Rush  
        is engaging in conversation with Greer.

“Hold this for me?” Greer says. 

Now Rush is holding an object.

“What do you think, should I try  
washing this thing in alien water?  
Or just slap some antibacterial gel  
on it and call it a day?” 

      He is holding an object and he is  
             looking at the shuttle and he is won-  
    dering if Chloe is dead because  
      she was on the hull and she was  
doing something and he was  
          frightened that she would be dead.

“Don’t think about it,” Young says.

                He is holding an object and he is  
not thinking about it.

 “Hand me some of that,” Greer says  
so Rush hands him the object.

“It’s gauze,” Tamara says.

Tamara is probably not real either.

Tamara says, “He’s injured.”

 Rush looks at Greer.  
“You’re injured?” he says. 

Greer gives him a look that Rush does not  
understand. 

“Yeah,” Greer says. “I hurt my leg in the  
crash. That’s why I’ve been cleaning it and  
bandaging it for the last fifteen minutes.” 

       This is something that Rush should  
         have noticed and clearly he is having  
        a problem noticing things and what  
         else has he not noticed is Greer here  
is _he_ here is he not the shuttle

“Easy,” Young says. “You’re doing your best.”

“You can help him,” Tamara says. “He’s  
right about the tetanus, or at least about the  
alien bacteria. He needs your help.”

But Young is not here and Tamara  
           is not here and so is Greer here? Is Rush?  
 What if none of them is here? What  
            if this is not real what if it has never been  
                  real after all who talks to a starship with their  
                 mind he has never heard anything so patently  
                    ridiculous except maybe the notion that Young  
                 could that Young could— that _Young_ could—  
               that Young _ever_ could— Young who left him  
                      to die Young whom he framed for murder Young  
                  who abandoned him to the Nakai and probably  
                          he is still in the tank probably he is still in the water  
                              probably he is still being tortured but he doesn’t know  
           what they want, what are they trying to get  
         by convincing him of all of this except to  
                make him _hurt_ with the idea that Young _could_  
            and then taking it away but why Young and  
     why this planet why any of it why Greer

“Doc,” Greer says. “You’re looking a little—“

Rush gropes for the dog tags hanging  
from their cheap metal chain around  
his neck because

If he is real then are _they_ real? _Are_ they?  
     If they are not real then none of this is real.

He runs his thumb over the letters  
Y O U N GE V E R E T TP.

It feels real but how does he know

                   Wenn mich mein Gedächtnis  
                   hier täuscht

how can he be sure of any of it.

                   so kann es mich  
                   überall täuschen

 “Greer,” Rush whispers. “I’m not sure  
you’re real.”

                  Wie lernt denn  
                  Einer seinen Zustand  
                  des Wissens erkennen?

Greer stares at him. “Nah,” he says  
after a minute, “I’m definitely real.” 

“I don’t think so. I think—  
I think they might be torturing me.” 

Greer studies him for a while. “The Nakai?” 

“Yes.” 

“I think he’s real,” Tamara says.

 Young says, “I bet he doesn’t know my  
middle initial.” 

“You’re gonna have to trust me on  
this one,” Greer says.

"If you were imagining him he'd know my  
middle initial." 

Rush says uncertainly, “Do you know  
Colonel Young’s middle initial?” 

“Uh,” Greer says. “No? Is that—  
is that the right answer or the wrong answer?  
Does he even have a middle name?” 

              Is he lying? Does he know?  
He could be lying.

                   Das Spiel des Zweifelns—

But Greer doesn’t look like he’s lying.  
He looks like he doesn’t know what  
to say to Rush or maybe what to do with him.

He looks sad.

“I know his blood type,” he says. “If you  
want to check that against what you  
got there. If that’s going to help any.  
It’s B positive. Like mine.”

BP O S, the letters say.

“But I have a feeling you could keep  
thinking yourself in circles all day long.  
It’s kind of what you’re best at. No  
offense. So you might just have to trust  
me.”

He ties off the bandage around his leg.

Tamara says, “I think you should trust him." 

Young says, “I think you should trust him.” 

Tamara suggests, “Try helping him out. See  
if that changes anything.” 

Rush sits down on the chalky ground the color  
of a piece of ivory scrimshaw in the Pitt Rivers Museum  
and reaches out to close his hand around Greer’s leg.  
He holds onto Greer’s leg very hard and this is really

      quite easy on the mechanical level because the manipulation  
         of energy-mass equivalence is something he’s been practicing  
    for a while, and the amount of energy in even a small piece  
               of mass would surprise or appall you just think of Alamogordo the  
shockwaves the white fallout the green glass so the only  
        tricky part is the actual replication, the small small structures  
           of the human body, the cells and the structures _inside_ the cells,  
           mitochondrial DNA and protein composition, dipeptides, amino  
                 acids, and everything has to be _exactly_ right because they’re finicky  
               things, human bodies; just look at Tamara; this is nothing to what  
                          he’s planning to attempt for her, though harder than having to constantly  
         make sure he’s not leaking heat-energy from his body and yes  
                        he does lose track of that for a bit but the whole process is over fast and  
he doesn’t understand Greer’s reaction 

which is to push him very violently away and—

 

                                                                                He’s—

                     He’s—

 

 

 

He’s—

 

 

 

 

 

 _Nomen?_  
_Tempos?_  
_Topos?_

 

“You’re fine,” Young says. “You’re fine. Everything’s  
fine. You just didn’t warn him." 

                    He is Nicholas Rush and he does not know  
         what calendar he is using and he is  
           lying on the rocks that are the color  
                                         of a piece of ivory scrimshaw in the Pitt Rivers Museum.

 “I’m cold,” he says. 

He is shivering. 

“I can’t actually touch you,”  
Young says gently, sitting  
down beside him. “Sorry.  
I would if I could.” 

Rush curls his knees to his chest and  
lets his hand rest on the chalky gravel  
as close as he can get to the very edge  
of Young’s not really here not really real  
hand. “I wish you were here,” he whispers. 

“Me too.”

“Everett.”

“Yeah?

“I wish I could tell you that—“

“I know. I know,” Young says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are extensive quotations (in English and German) here from Wittgenstein's remarks _On Certainty_.
> 
> Translations:
> 
> Ich weiss, dass ich ein Mensch bin. Nicht wahr? = I know that I'm a man. Don't I?
> 
> Weiss ich, oder  
> glaube ich nur  
> dass ich… heisse? = "Do I know or do I only believe that my name is...?
> 
> Wenn das falsch ist  
> dann bin ich verrückt = If this is false, then I am mad.
> 
> Was aber ist der Unterschied  
> zwischen Irrtum und  
> Geisterstörung? = But what is the difference between mistake and mental disturbance?
> 
> Wenn mich mein Gedächtnis  
> hier täuscht  
> so kann es mich  
> überall täuschen = If my memory deceives me here, it can deceive me anywhere.
> 
> Wie lernt denn  
> Einer seinen Zustand  
> des Wissens erkennen? = For how does a man learn to recognize his own state of knowing something? 
> 
> Das Spiel des Zweifelns— The game of doubting
> 
> En quad denguad fathlator = In what language does he speak
> 
> Em dolhet— cubi? = He hurts— where?
> 
> The shuttle is afraid et en acuad estque  
> is caica estque pavdus estque neum caica  
> n’estque en acuad n’est sed he remem-  
> bers being the shuttle not being the  
> shuttleque altera res sents memonator-  
> que
> 
> = The shuttle is afraid and it's in the water and he's the shuttle and he's scared and no he's not the shuttle he's not in the water but he remembers being the shuttle not being the shuttle and he remembers being other things and


	57. The Two-Body Problem: Part 4

So things are not going super well in South Carolina.

In retrospect, it probably hadn’t been the best move to shove Rush the hell off him and shout, “What the fuck, man?” But, like: what the fuck, man? The correct etiquette is to warn a guy before you grab hold of his just-bandaged and pretty banged-up appendage to do some freaky-ass shit to it, especially if you’re not, like, at your mentally soundest, and your mentally soundest would be most other people’s pretty fucking strange. Not to mention that Rush’d never hinted that he could do this particular freaky-ass shit, so when he started _growing_ stuff at microwave temperatures inside Greer’s leg, the obvious and natural reaction was not, _Wow, Doc, thanks for healing me!_ but rather, you know, _What the fuck!_

But Rush _had_ been healing him. There’s no hint of the hole in his leg now. Just ordinary muscle and brown skin. The hairs are even grown out to the same length. It’s like nothing happened.

Meanwhile, Rush is lying curled up on the ground about three feet behind Greer, shivering and not responding to his name.

"Rush," Greer says.

Still nothing.

“Rush,” Greer tries again, crouching down beside him. “Hey, Doc. You in there?”

Slowly, Rush’s eyes focus on him. “Cartesian dualism,” he whispers. “Homunculus fallacy.”

Greer grins. “Yeah, okay. You’re back.”

“Not gone.”

“Well, sort of. You freaked out a little.”

“No. I do not freak out.”

“Whatever,” Greer says. “Sorry I yelled at you. You surprised me, is all. That’s— that’s a pretty sweet new skill set you got there.”

Rush scowls at him. “Patronizing,” he says. “I’m not a child.”

“Nope. Definitely not a child. Just a pain in my ass.” Greer stands up and offers a hand to him.

Rush accepts it, but still has a really hard time getting upright. His balance is shot to shit, or else something else is wrong, like maybe he doesn’t quite know how to use his body. It doesn’t help that he’s shaky with cold or whatever he’s always getting shaky with.

“You want my jacket?” Greer asks, steadying him with his other hand.

Rush hesitates, mouth going tight.

“Come on. I don’t need it; it’s like seventy degrees here. South Carolina. Who knew?”

So Rush takes the jacket and then squints at it like he doesn’t know what to do with it. His eyes flick briefly off into space, and he slowly fumbles until he can line up one sleeve with his left arm, looking like a little kid trying to get dressed for the first time. It takes him three tries to get his arm through the sleeve, and the other one doesn’t go any easier.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Greer says, watching him, “but if you can fix me, can’t you fix yourself?”

“Somewhat,” Rush says absently, staring at one of the oversized jacket cuffs like he’s never seen anything like it in his life. “What do you think you're looking at? It’s like—“

Greer waits, but Rush doesn’t finish the sentence.

“Like what?” Greer asks eventually.

Rush sits down hard, like his strings have been cut. His eyes are vacant.

“Shit,” Greer says under his breath. Here they go again.

He kneels down next to Rush and shakes his shoulders gently. “Rush? Hey, Rush? Anybody home?”

Nope. Nobody’s home. Greer sighs and lets his head drop. He’d really like them to get out of the open and take cover in the trees, but getting Rush anywhere is going to be a problem if he can’t even put on a fucking jacket without it taking five minutes and involving some kind of fugue state at the end.

Abruptly Rush jerks to life and shoves Greer’s hands off him, looking furious. “Don’t touch me,” he snaps.

“Yeah, yeah,” Greer says wearily. “Just cool it for a second, can you?”

“Cold already,” Rush says, petulant.

“I know. But what the hell just happened to you?”

Rush frowns. “What?”

“You kind of… stopped.”

Rush considers this carefully. “ _Nimia indeicia_ ," he says at last. _"Ensufficiens potentia operandi._ ”

“ _Ne te teneo,_ ” Greer says, which is probably the only really useful phrase of Ancient he’s picked up.

Rush screws up his nose like he’s concentrating hard. He makes a short, helpless gesture. “Crash and restart,” he says. “Gradual hard disk failure.”

“… Right,” Greer says.

He can just imagine what Young’s response would be to hearing Rush describe himself as experiencing gradual hard-disk failure. It’s the first time since they got to this fucking planet that Greer’s been glad Young wasn’t here. Not that he thinks Young would deal too well with the current Rush situation. Young kind of flips his lid whenever something happens to Rush, which is understandable, Greer guesses, especially if they’re— well, whatever they are. Unfortunately, Young flipping his lid is Young yelling a whole lot and getting really defensive, which tends to turn Rush into his spitting-est, hissing-est, hackliest self. So, yeah, maybe it’s good Young’s not here.

Greer sighs. “Come on,” he says. “How do you feel about being upright? We ought to get out of the open.”

He helps Rush lurch up onto his unsteady feet again. Rush squints up at the sky. “Night,” he says vaguely.

“No,” Greer says. “Or— I don’t know. I don’t think so. We’re in the twilight band.”

“The twilight band,” Rush says, absorbing this information. “How long?”

“How long since we crashed? About an hour.” Greer goes to collect their salvaged gear. “Why; how long do solar flares last?”

Rush is still staring at the sky. “Minutes,” he says. “Not hours.”

“So that’s good news, right? Any time now someone’ll be coasting on down here. They’re probably working out our trajectory as we speak. Maybe packing up some snacks for the return trip. A little picnic basket. I could really go for a picnic.”

“They lost their sensors,” Rush says. “And I altered our trajectory. They’ll have to sweep a large area of the planet for us.”

Not such good news. “You’re sure we shouldn’t send a signal? Could we rig something up from the shuttle?”

Rush’s attention wanders to the shuttle’s crumpled bulk, still rocking back and forth in the running water.

“It’s not alive anymore,” he says in a low voice. “I would have to put my mind inside it."

"I don't think that's a great idea," Greer says uneasily, because the last thing they need is Rush forgetting he's a person again.

Rush doesn't seem to have heard him. "The Nakai— would know it was me," he says, his gaze troubled. "They would know I was here. They would deduce the information from the nature of my signal.”

He flinches at something Greer can’t see, and takes a faltering step towards the creek. Then another.

“Nope,” Greer says, grabbing his arm. “Not happening. You’ve spent enough time with that shuttle.”

“It knew me,” Rush says, staring at it, something really fucking desolate in his expression. “It loved me. It was afraid.”

“It’s a _shuttle_ ,” Greer says.

“I wish it was not in the water,” Rush whispers.

Greer has to physically turn him around to get him to face towards the trees. For a minute or so, when they first start walking, Rush won’t stop looking over his shoulder, and Greer has to keep a close eye on him.

Then he seems to forget about the shuttle, and relaxes, and lets Greer pull him into the wood’s noiseless black shadows.

It’s weird: a forest with no animal life in it. Just the straight white trunks of trees, like bones stuck in the ground. Greer looks up uneasily about every five or ten seconds, because maybe it’s, fuck, Earth-centric of him, or whatever, but there’s something not _right_ about a wild place that quiet. He can hear every strip of bark crunching under his feet.

He finds a downed tree where he has a sightline to the shuttle, and parks Rush on the other side of it, so _he_ won’t have a sightline to the shuttle. So many moving fucking pieces to keep track of on this mission.

“Well, here we are,” he says, when he’s got himself settled. “You and me. On vacation in South Carolina. Our very own Man vs. Wild camping trip. Men vs. Wild. Man and Ancient versus whatever the hell this is.”

“Not Ancient,” Rush says.

“Yeah? What are you, then?”

“Not one thing or the other. You can’t put me in a box.” He’s with it enough to look smug. Of course he is.

Greer rolls his eyes. “You ever thought about the fact that sometimes boxes are a good thing?”

“No."

“I could go for a nice box right now. Cosy. Keeps the rain off your head."

He reaches over and feels in Rush’s jacket pocket, which is to say _his_ jacket pocket, for the power bar he knows is there. Rush glares at him, but Greer’s quick enough to avoid getting slapped at for violating the _no touching_ rule.

“Chill,” he says anyway. “I’m just getting a snack out. It’s snack time.”

“This isn’t fucking—“ Rush struggles for a minute. “ _Nursery_ school.”

“No. We already decided. It’s a camping trip. You know what you do on a camping trip? You eat snacks. You get your fire going, you get your marshmallows out, you get your graham crackers and chocolate…that’s what I’m talking about.”

Rush looks down at the half a power bar that Greer passes him. “Greer,” he says. “I don’t think you’ve ever been on a camping trip.”

“Have _you?_ ” Greer asks pointedly.

Rush doesn’t answer.

“Exactly. So eat your damn power bar, why don’t you.”

Rush takes a grudging bite of his power bar, his eyes flicking out into the shadows of the trees.

After a while, Greer says, “I used to want to go camping. People who go camping, I figure there’s nothing in their regular lives that feels like it’s coming for them. They got to go someplace else to find that feeling, so they can get just close enough to know they’re safe. I never had that problem, growing up.”

There’s a pause.

“No,” Rush says quietly.

“No?” Greer isn’t a hundred percent sure that Rush understands what he’s asking.

But their eyes meet for a second, and he thinks maybe Rush does understand. “No,” Rush says.

Greer looks down. “Yeah,” he says. “I kind of figured.”

They eat in silence for a while, before Rush says, “Stars.”

“What?”

“People look at the stars. When they are camping. You get a lot of stars in northern Wyoming. You can see the Milky Way.”

Rush is staring out into the forest, his head tilted as though he’s listening to something. His face is wistful. Or maybe just sad.

“Doc,” Greer says carefully, “are you— are you hearing something?”

Rush flinches. His gaze swings to Greer. “No. Why?”

“It just seems like you might be hearing something.”

“No,” Rush says. “There’s nothing to hear. There’s no one there. Just you and me. Camping.”

“Right,” Greer says, unsettled. He glances out into the twilight shadows. They haven’t seen anything alive on this planet, he thinks, and more importantly, they haven’t seen anything _previously_ alive, which means there are _no ghosts_ , and even though he doesn't really believe in ghosts, they're still the main thing that’s making his skin crawl right now, as he looks out at the bluish dark through the bone-colored trees.

“I’m not _crazy_ ,” Rush says, sounding tense.

“Nobody said that. I know you’re not crazy. But, you know, you must be pretty tired by now. I bet it takes a lot out of you, being a shuttle and shit. Crashing. And then… the other kind of crashing. And so on. Maybe you want to take a nap.”

“Fuck you,” Rush says.

“Or you could just lie down for a while. Focus on getting nice and warm.”

“I don’t need a _nap_ ,” Rush snaps. “I’m not _tired_ , and I’m not fucking _crazy_. If you don’t—“

He breaks off, looking confused, and then sort of sags sideways onto Greer. His eyes are open but empty, and his body’s gone limp. Greer gets hold of him with a sigh and lowers him to the soft, mossy ground.

“Rush?” he says, shaking Rush’s shoulder.

Nothing.

“Right. Crash and reset. You know, I’m kind of hoping we don’t run into any trouble on this planet, because I get the feeling you’re not going to do so well with that. But, hey. Not a problem. We’re going to get rescued any minute. And there definitely aren’t any ghosts around here. Nope.” Greer looks around the clearing, and out to where the shuttle gleams in the dark creek water. “No ghosts. Definitely not.”

Rush stirs against the green moss and grayish lichen. “Ghost,” he says haltingly, blinking up at Greer. “—Is an ontological descriptor for a type of agent whose parameters don’t conform to the expected range.”

Greer glances dubiously at him. “Uh, okay. Sure. See, I think a ghost is a scary-ass dead thing.”

“Not alive. Not dead.”

“Whatever you say, Doc.”

There’s a short pause. After a while, Rush says, “Greer.”

“Uh-huh?”

“Do you think that the shuttle—“

Greer closes his eyes. He’s starting to get a headache. “We’re done with the shuttle,” he says. “It’s an ex-shuttle. We’ve moved on from the shuttle. It’s shuffled off this mortal coil. Forget about it.”

Rush falls silent.

Greer is pretty sure he was going to ask if the shuttle is a ghost, which is a question that Greer just cannot fucking handle at this exact juncture. Or ever. He is never going to be able to handle a question about whether a goddamn _shuttle_ is a _ghost._ Everyone is going to be a lot happier on this expedition if he doesn’t have to deal with questions about _ghost shuttles_. That is way the hell not what he signed up for.

“No stars,” Rush whispers at last.

Greer can see his eyes gleaming in the not-quite dark. He’s staring up at purple sky and the tops of the white trees.

“What?” Greer asks.

Rush gesture vaguely up at the sky. “No stars here.”

“Oh,” Greer says. “Yeah. 'Cause of the galactic void.”

“Very bad camping trip.”

Greer smiles faintly. “Sorry about that, Doc. I’ll have to make it up to you later.”

Rush turns on his side and curls his knees up against his chest. After a moment, he says quietly, “I wish there were stars.”

* * *

Eventually Rush does sleep for a while, in fits and starts, like he’s still crashing. Maybe he’s crashing in his dreams. It scares the hell out of Greer, because one minute Rush’ll be fast asleep, with his forehead furrowed, holding onto Young’s dog tags, and the next minute he’ll snap to attention, breathing hard, sometimes making little scared, startled noises.

Neither one of them seems to love the whole routine, and Rush finally hurls a chunk of tree branch into the forest and says savagely, “ _Fuck_ this.”

“Yeah,” Greer says. “I feel you.” Between the intervals of heart-palpitating panic, he’s getting pretty bored. Even the threat of weird alien bear monsters is starting to get old. At a certain point, you just gotta be like, All right, alien bear monsters, either shit or get off the pot. You know— either show up, or you’re going to be a big old let down after all the time I’ve spent building your asses up.

“When— who—“ Rush closes his eyes and slams his fist against the ground. After a second, he takes a deep breath. “How long have we been here?” he asks in a controlled voice.

“Two-and-a-half hours.”

Rush nods, his expression tight. He says matter-of-factly, “They’re not coming for us.”

“I guarantee you they _are_ coming for us.”

“The Nakai have dropped out.”

“How would _you_ know?” Greer counters.

Rush isn’t looking at him. He’s staring off at a fixed point in the forest. “Fishhooks,” he murmurs.

Greer covers his face with his hands. “What the _hell_.”

“Destiny is passing through this planet’s star.”

“You don’t know that.”

“They’re here. They’re tracking Destiny to predict its point of egress. They’re scanning the planet. They’ll detect the shuttle’s energy signature.”

“Rush. Come on, man.”

“They will launch short-range craft to investigate.”

Rush is shivering now, hugging his arms to his body. Whatever he’s seeing out in the forest makes him flinch. After a minute, he puts his hands over his ears, shaking his head like he’s rejecting something someone’s saying to him.

“Rush,” Greer says. “What are you _listening_ to?”

“I _won’t_ ,” Rush says, sounding agonized. “I won’t _let_ them. We have to get out of here.”

“We’re not going _anywhere_.”

“There are ruins on this planet. Ruins with naquadah in them.”

“No one’s going to be able to find us if we leave!”

“Yes. _Exactly_.” Rush pushes himself unsteadily to his feet. “They’re going to look for us. They’re going to track us. And when they find us, they will _never_ let us go. They will _use_ me to— to—“ His face warps in distress. “And _you_.”

His gaze swings to Greer, dark and panicked.

“You think there’s something inside you that will survive,” he says. “But there isn’t. It’s not true. You’ll change. They’ll hurt you in ways you can’t begin to imagine. Not because they’re cruel. But because they don’t care. To them, you’re an insect. They will _make_ you an insect. You’ll forget that you were ever a man. And if for some brief moment you ever remember, it will seem like a bad dream you were having— the idea that you could ever have been something with such a capacity to be hurt. You’ll be _grateful_. Grateful that your suffering is over. Because at least an insect can’t hurt like a man. And when they’re done— when they’ve done that— they’ll—“

“ _Rush_ ,” Greer says and grabs Rush by the shoulders and shakes him.

Rush stops, breathing hard.

“It’s not happening,” Greer says intensely.

From above them, in the dusk-colored atmosphere, comes the faint sound of a sonic boom.

A small craft has entered the upper atmosphere.

Greer looks up. He can see the descending ship, a dark pinprick, almost undiscernable in the twilight.

There’s a second sonic boom.

Then a third.

Greer looks at Rush. Rush’s eyes are closed, his face white.

“Go. I’m right behind you,” Greer says.


	58. The Two-Body Problem: Part 5

He

 

 

 

                                             He

 

 

 

 

                    He is—

 

“Doc. You have to get up.”

 

 

 

 

He is Nicholas Rush?

 

 

He is Nicholas Rush and he  
                     does not know what calendar he is using  
                            and he is lying on the ground in an alien city.

Black plants with wide leaves run  
         close to the splitting pavement, forcing  
          cracks open like maws. They eat the sun  
             and they destabilize the foundations. This  
           is what happens to cities when you don’t  
 stay alert. Black plants always wait  
                underneath the infrastructure or if you don’t  
        have good infrastructure for instance—

During the Blitz the ruins  
given over to ivy and brambles  
and feral children who played  
with sticks and plague pits would  
occasionally surface where a well-  
placed bomb reminded the city of  
something it had tried to forget—

“For Christ’s sake,” David says.

Greer gets a hand under his elbow and  
drags him to his feet, fumbling in his haste.

David says, “You can’t even manage to _run_  
_away_. Admittedly that was never your  
strong suit, if you can be said to have a  
strong suit, unless we’re countingyour  
sad little workarounds. ‘Oh, no, I’ve fucked  
up again, now I have to figure a way out of it!’  
Well, Nick, you really fucked up this time. And  
you’re doing a pretty pathetic job of running away,  
so maybe you ought to consider a workaround.”

He does not want David here  
but maybe David has a point.

“Come on,” Greer says.

If he runs away they will catch him  
           and when they catch him they will put him  
           in a cage and he does not know what kind  
         of a cage it will be for instance will he be  
      conscious? Will he be in one piece? Will  
           they rewire his brain it’s been tried before  
                but presumably they have more sophisticated  
             technology and then he would no longer be  
            himself maybe he would not be a self at all

“Don’t think about it,” Young tells him.

Chloe whispers, her eyes huge and haunted,  
“You’re not safe from them till you’re dead.”

David says, “Cut the self-pitying crap.  
You’re always trying to play people. Oh,  
boo-hoo, I’m so scared, I’m so screwed-up,  
help me. It’s probably your most effective con.  
Even I fell for it. I should have told you to just  
get off your ass and do what had to be done.  
That’s when you do your best work, you know.  
Under the whip.” 

He does not—

                Don’t think about water.

like this.

               Don’t think about the tank.

His arms are folded over his head.

“Rush,” Greer says. “Snap out of it.”

Chloe says, “No one else knows. Not really.  
Not like we do. No one else understands.”

“I’m—“ Rush says.

Greer is holding him very tightly by the shoulders.

as though he is trying to tear Rush loose  
   from Destiny but there is no Destiny there  
       is only the inside of Rush’s own head a black  
   and threatening space from which he must  
       also now be rescued because there are things  
     down there in the darkness and he does not  
            know what kinds of things but he thinks they are  
things that want to eat him. 

Greer’s fingertips hurt. 

“—thinking,” Rush finishes. “We can’t outrun them.” 

“What, so you got a better plan?”

 “You know,” Young says, “you’re in the middle  
of a city. If you’re looking for a ship or a gate—“

  which he is because that is what they need  
 a ship or a gate because there is no going  
         back to the shuttle now even though he wishes  
      that he could be the shuttle again that was a  
   simpler time when he was being the shuttle  
and he should not have left it  
       in the water why does he always—

“Stop feeling _sorry_ for yourself,” David says. 

“—you might want to think about how you’re  
going to do that. There’s got to be a lot of  
resources around here.” 

Greer is still waiting for an answer. 

“I need a terminal,” Rush says. 

“A terminal?” 

“Something I can—“ He makes a  
vague gesture because he does not  
know how to explain

  and he is beginning to suspect that Young  
et al are not hallucinations or not strictly  
    hallucinations but perhaps a means through  
       which he can access information for instance a  
sort of associative array but no one steps  
     forward to provide the appropriate phrasing.

“Something you can stick your hand  
into,” Greer says. 

“Yes." 

“I don’t think that’s really a good idea,  
but we’re pretty fucked at the moment, so." 

“That’s an accurate way of describing  
the situation,” Rush says.

He steps forward and he—

 

 

 

 

is?

 

                                    He is?

 

 

 

 

 

 

             He’s

 

 

 

 

He is Nicholas Rush.

 

 

 

He is Nicholas Rush and he is—

                              shivering.

 

 

 

 He is huddled on the ground.

Greer.

 

Greer was here and Greer is not here. 

When was Greer here?

 

It is dark.

He is indoors.  
         A broad-leafed plant is determinedly  
       growing through a crack in the pale  
  gray wall and there is something  
      sinister about it maybe but he likes  
its ambition. Fuck you says the  
   broad-leafed plant. Don’t tell me  
 where to grow and not to grow.

            He watches the broad-leafed plant  
        for a long time. It is the color of  
     Petershill Drive in a hard rain.  
   He wishes he knew where he  
  was or when he was or what  
      Petershill Drive was or where it  
was or when it was maybe.

“Hey, Nick,” Daniel says. “You’re  
inside some sort of industrial building  
in the center of an abandoned city. You  
came here after the shuttle crashed.  
Remember? Greer went to look for a  
terminal that you could use to figure out  
if there’s a ship or a gate you can use to  
get back to Destiny." 

Yes.  
The shuttle crashed.  
In the water. He was  
                         the shuttle and he is not the shuttle.  
                          The Nakai came to put him in a cage.

“Oh, here we go again,” David says.

Rush says, “No one asked you for your  
opinion.” 

 _“Do you think Young knows how fucked-up_  
_you are?”_

_“No one asked you for your opinion.”_

_“Jesus. I’m just making conversation.”_

_“No conversation is required.”_

_“I’m just curious. He must really have_  
_a hard on for taking care of people, huh?_  
_Look at you. You can barely stand up.”_

 _“For fuck’s sake, David. Just hand the_  
_thing over, or am I going to have to_  
_suck your cock tonight?”_

 _“I wouldn’t say no. You were always_  
_extremely talented in that regard. Maybe_  
_that’s why dear Everett’s so determined_  
_to stick around.”_

 _“Not everyone stores their mind in the_  
_nearest gutter, like you do.”_

 _“Oh, like you’re so high and mighty. You_  
_let me fuck you in the first place— why,_  
_exactly? As part of one of the patented_  
_Nick Rush power plays? I know that was_  
_what the night on Icarus was about. With_  
_the rest, I always figured it was either that or you_  
_were just one of those girls who cain’t say no.”_

 _“Fuck you.”_  

 _“It doesn’t bother_ me _. We had a good time._  
_But Everett, you know, he’s a nice boy. He_  
_has sentimental feelings. Even his bit on the_  
_side was an apple-cheeked country girl. How_  
_long do you think it’ll be before he figures_  
_out you’re conning him somehow? Which_  
_you are, Nick. I mean, I know you. I know_  
_you are.”_

_“You don’t know me anymore.”_

_“You really think you’ve changed that much?_  
_You haven’t. You’re still the same old fucked-_  
_up Nick."_

 

                                     This is the dead land.  
                                         This is cactus land.

 Except it is not cactus land.  
And it is not dead because  
     the wind stirs the vines on the  
        windows with the little colorless  
              flowers that have red veins in them.  
                 But it is dead because everything here  
          is broken. Everything that can be  
            broken is broken. It can’t be fixed.

 Something happened here. 

“This is their place,” Chloe whispers.  
“You know it is.”

                                   There are no eyes here  
                             in this valley of dying stars.

Yes. He knows.

“Why do you think they brought so  
much naquadah here? To a tidally-  
locked world in an intergalactic void?”

They were doing something  
            they could only do in the black part  
                     of space far far out without any stars and  
                       they were not very good at it they were not  
                         very careful and now they are all dead. They  
                            are not any more. And the city is not any more  
                            because it is full of little colorless flowers with  
                                    red veins in them and the windows are not because  
                                           their glass is all on the floor and this suggests a number  
                           of things what does it suggest it suggests that

              he would really like to not be here and he would  
                     really like to know where the Nakai are at this exact  
                    moment and what moment is that and how long has  
        it been since Greer left and is Greer real was  
he ever real and is he dead and therefore  
                maybe he was real but he is not real anymore and  
              is Rush alone is he the only one in this dead city  
                 with its broken windows and its whispering broad-  
              leaved plants and he is not panicking about this  
                            he’d just like to define the parameters of the situation it’s  
                 really imperative that he define the parameters of  
the situation and

he needs Young with his sturdy  
chest and steady heartbeats always  
knowing what time it is and how long it’s  
been since the last time it was a time and  
opening the door over and over he is like  
a snail maybe or a turtle he carries his sense  
of place with him and is that why he’s slow when  
Rush on the other hand is a rabbit rabbit-hearted  
and racing pell-mell from the hunters hiding  
and very lost in the dark dark wood

“Please,” Rush whispers. “Please find me.”

 _You know you don’t have to wait for an invitation_    
_I’d totally learn Ancient for you_

“I think you’re going to have to find _us_ ,” Young says. 

and he needs the AI who says   
_Please Nick I wish you would not_  
and reminds him what he is supposed  
to be doing in other words who he is  
supposed to be being and

“Please. I can’t. I can’t.”

“Sure you can.”

“I can’t,” Rush says, despairing.

Young says, “But I’m waiting for you.”

But who is Young waiting for it’s not really clear it’s  
   probably not the shuttle or the ghost of the shuttle or  
        anything that is not one hundred percent something and  
      he doesn’t think that is him but at the moment he’s not  
       really sure because all he knows is that he is huddled in  
    this dead room in a dead building and his whole body  
is shaking because is very very cold and the corners  
       of his vision are full of star bursts but that can’t be right  
  this is the intergalactic void and there are no stars so  
     perhaps he is panicking there is a non-zero probability  
of that and—

 

 

 

 

He

 

 

 

 

 

 

ishe’sheis

 

 

 

 

 

 

“—the _fuck_ up, Doc, come on—“

He is Nicholas Rush and he is  
          in a dead room in a dead building.  
           It is twilight and it has always been  
                    twilight and Greer is crouching very close  
                     to him his eyes dark and frightened in the  
                         twilight that is not twilight that is something  
called the twilight band.

“Greer,” Rush says.

“Yes. Yeah. It’s me. There you go." 

“I’m cold,” Rush says.

He doesn’t know why he’s so cold.

“I know. I know. You’re not good at—  
fuck, I don’t know. Being a thermos or something.  
You’re notgood at not getting cold. But  
I found you a terminal.”

“A terminal?”

“For interfacing,” Eli says. “You need to find an Ancient  
ship. Or a gate. Or a Nakai ship. Really you can  
probably fly pretty much anything that’s got a propulsion  
system. Anything you can stick your hands into.”

“Yes,” Greer says, sounding weary. “A terminal.  
You wanted me to find you a terminal. It’s  
two stories up.”

“Oh,” Rush says.

“Come on. Let’s get you on your feet.”

But when he is on his feet he feels  
           like he is going to fall down again and he  
           does not know why this is maybe because  
he is so cold.

“You’re sick,” Tamara says.

David says, “You’re just trying to get  
attention. Jesus, Nick; do you always  
have to act like a spoiled kid?”

Chloe whispers, “You can feel them.  
Their thoughts are painful.”

“Your RAM disk loses its stored data  
whenever you abruptly change position,”  
Rodney says.

“You know what I wonder?” David says.

He doesn’t—

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He’s he

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

is heis

 

 

 

 

 

 

                He is standing on a set of stairs in the dark.  
                   But it is not dark it is twilight and the twilight  
                 glitters off pieces of broken glass. Someone  
              is dragging him upwards and he does not  
             want to be dragged upwards although he  
          does not know exactly who he is. He is  
                 someone who does not want to be dragged  
                 upwards. So he stops and digs his heels in.

“Rush,” Greer hisses. “Come _on_.”

“I told you,” Rodney says smugly. “He pulled  
you up too fast and you lost about ninety seconds.  
Can you do me a favor and just _tell_ this guy that  
your RAM disk loses its stored data with sudden  
movements? Speaking on behalf of all of us, we’re  
tired of having to re-orientate you every twenty  
minutes or so.”

He does not know how to explain to Greer  
  that his RAM disk loses its stored data with  
sudden movements.

“My RAM disk loses its stored data with  
sudden movements,” he says.

Greer shuts his eyes for a moment. “Please  
tell me you did not expect me to understand that.” 

He does not know how to explain to Greer  
  that his RAM disk loses its stored data with  
sudden movements.

“ _Sudden movements_ ,” Rush says. He gestures to  
his head. “Nothing. System reboot.”

Greer studies him. “Right. Okay. So if I—“

He pulls Rush’s arm over his shoulder and  
slowly, carefully helps him up a step.

“Okay?” he asks. 

“Yes.” 

They take the next step faster. 

“Still okay?” 

“Yes.”

 “Good. Cause we want to make  
damn sure to stay ahead of those guys.” 

“What I wonder,” David says, “is whether  
Young realizes that down at the root of you,  
there’s really nothing left. I mean, look at you.  
Take away Destiny, and what are you?  
You don’t even know your fucking name.”

   He does. He _does_ know his fucking  
      name. His name is Nicholas Rush. He  
is almost entirely certain of that.

“He thinks he can fix you, and, well,  
we already know why _that_ ’s not going  
to happen. But even if it could, who  
would you be? No one. Nothing. There  
is no Nicholas Rush. Even with Gloria,  
you were only ever who she wanted you  
to be.”

“That’s not true,” Rush whispers. 

“What?” Greer says. 

“Of course it’s true. Why the fuck would I  
be here if my job wasn’t to tell you the truth?” 

“Rush,” Greer says. “Who are you  
_talking_ to?” 

Rush says, “I’m hallucinating what appears  
to be an anthropomorphized representation  
of an associative array.” 

“Jesus,” Greer says. “I wish I hadn’t asked.” 

“I’m not crazy,” Rush says.

He’s not crazy.

He’s just not one hundred percent him  
                which is to say that he is not some undetermined  
               percent Destiny and some undetermined percent  
             Young so perhaps in fact the problem is that he  
               is one hundred percent him but that is no longer  
          all that being him requires and perhaps it has  
                     never been sufficient to be one hundred percent him.

“I didn’t say you were crazy.  
Just— maybe tune it out for a while,  
okay? Tell it you’re busy.”

Rush doesn’t say anything.

“They’re getting closer,” Chloe whispers. “You  
can feel them. They’re faster than you are.” 

“But there’s something they don’t know.  
Something no one knows,” Rodney says.  
“Alamogordo, remember? Even if you can’t  
ascend quite yet, you can still— you see where  
I’m going with this.”

 

Yes

                 he

                               does

                                                                                                     but

                 he

                              does

                                                 not

        want

                                    to

 _think_ about it because Everett is waiting for him and Gloria  
is waiting for him or Gloria was waiting for him and he did not  
come and now Gloria who is not Gloria is waiting for him and  
Chloe is waiting for him and Mandy waits in the dark of the  
ship and so much depends upon his unsustainable incarnation  
this small sick frustrating body that constantly fails to suppress  
the black-leaved impulses it      is must he      fights    can’t    buried                                   oh no

  
oh no

                sticks                             surface         ruins

  
                                  blitz 

_he is in the water and he cannot see them through the water but they are in his brain and so he knows they are there; he can feel them splitting open his thoughts as though he offers no more resistance than the crisp hardened shell of a nut, crack, crack, crack like the steel jaws of a nutcracker, meticulous and precise, nut by nut, and why is it so easy, why is it so painful, why is what is painful always easy, have you ever thought about that, Nick? Have you ever wondered if you want this, if you want to be cracked open, if it’s your own fault because you want it and of course it is, and if you deserve it then that is in its own way a wanting, and God knows you deserve this, which even they know; they pull out the meat of the nut and it is memories of Gloria and they show her to him, dying, screaming for him—_

 

 

 

 

 

          He is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

he is      He

 

 

                                                               is

 

  

  He is standing in front of a terminal.  
A terminal is something you touch.  
          A terminal is something that talks to him.  
         He is going to touch the terminal and see  
            if it will talk to him and maybe the terminal  
               will tell him who is because he does not know  
who he is.

“To me,” David says,  
“you’ve always seemed like someone  
who had the shit beat out of you as a kid.  
Thoughts?”

  
He came home with no bike and a tooth  
missing. The next day he had two teeth missing.  
It required a special kind of math.

“Doc,” Greer says. “You with me?”

Eli says, “Remember. You’re looking for  
a gate or a ship. A gate or a ship.”

“Hi, Nick,” says Sergeant Riley. “I hope I can  
call you Nick. Technically, I suppose we  
haven’t met.”

Rush frowns at him, puzzled.

 Riley says, “Ignore me. I’m just an observer.”

“You think you can ignore me?” David says.

    He would like everyone to stop talking.  
          He would like to be alone with the circuits.  
Circuits do not make him distressed  
  and maybe for a little while he will be  
     something else for instance a computer  
         terminal and that will be all right and then  
it will be easier to be himself again. 

“Yes,” he says to Greer. “I am here with you.”

                   He is. And then he interfaces with the  
                terminal and he— isn't— anymore—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are a couple of quotes in here from T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men."


	59. The Two-Body Problem: Part 6

Greer faces west, looking out through one of the blown-out windows, over the ruins of the city. The whole landscape is nothing but shades of gray, even in the blue-purple light, like God ran out of change and couldn’t afford a color copy. Even the plants are shades of gray: black and white and kind of translucent and cigarette-ash-colored, and all of them grow like spiderwebs, mimicking the dark metal that’s swirled into the walls of the buildings.

It’s pretty fucking bleak. It looks dead. He can’t imagine people walking around in this city, doing normal city things— shopping and playing ball and jumping rope and hanging out drinking lemonade on the front step. It’s not just because of the broken glass and plants. He doesn’t think anyone’s ever jumped rope in this city.

A thunderstorm is brewing up in the southeast, black clouds and veins of lightning.

He keeps his hand on his knife and his jaw set.

Behind him, Rush has one hand inside the pried-open circuitry of the terminal. A faint glow comes from between his fingers, and the suggestion of heat. It’s—

Well. Greer can just imagine getting back to Destiny and being like, By the way, Colonel, your boyfriend? He can plug himself into dead computers and make them run with his brain. Plus the whole healing-the-sick thing, although for some reason that seems less creepy, and Greer is pretty sure Young’s going to see it that way.

Young is not going to be stoked.

But, well, Greer would rather Young not be stoked than him and Rush be, you know, dead.

Finally Rush pulls his hand back from the terminal, the light dying. He stands there for a while, staring at the blank screen.

“Rush?” Greer prompts, because he’s getting used to this whole Rush-needs-to-be-reminded-of-reality thing.

“Yes,” Rush says, looking troubled. “A valid point. But I fail to see how I—“

He breaks off, as though he’s listening to someone else speak.

“ _Rush_ ,” Greer says again.

Rush starts and stares at him, wide-eyed. “Greer,” he murmurs.

“Still me. Always gonna be me. Till we get out of this freaky _I Am Legend_ -style city.”

Rush’s gaze drifts to the left, and he flinches. “I wish he weren’t here,” he says, almost inaudibly.

“Who?”

“No one. Nothing.” Rush crosses his arms over his chest tightly. “I— searched their database. Have I— Did I tell you that already?”

“No,” Greer says, trying to stay patient.

“There’s a gate here. It isn’t active. Also ships.”

“Can you make the gate work? With your—“ Greer wiggles his fingers. "Magic powers?”

Rush frowns at him, brow furrowed.

“Come on. You know what I mean.”

But something else has caught Rush’s attention. He stares out into space for a minute, and then very slowly drops to his knees, placing his hands flat against the metal floor. “Research,” he says quietly. “They were doing research here. No wonder they—“

Another one of those pauses, like someone’s interrupted him.

“It’s my body, and I’ll do what I want with it!” he hisses after a minute. He’s starting to look a little bit panicked.

“Doc,” Greer says soothingly. “Forget it, okay? Whatever your, uh, ray people are telling you. Let’s stick a pin in all of that for a while and focus on the gate.”

Rush squints up at him. “The gate.”

“Yes. The gate. Where is the gate?”

“Five kilometers left and half a kilometer down.”

“Half a klick _down?_ ”

“Yes,” Rush says absently. “Their origins remain subterranean, though their aspirations are interstellar."

He’s staring in a haunted way at the floor, as though he’s seeing something there, some kind of spooky moving picture, and his shivering has ratcheted up.

“ _They_ ,” Greer says uneasily.

“It’s their planet. Didn’t you know?”

“You mean the Nakai.”

Rush whispers, “Yes.”

Thunder shudders somewhere in the distance, and Greer shudders a little in response, because that was the only thing missing from this whole low-budget horror extravaganza: a big fucking dark noisy thunderstorm. They don’t even have a creepy mansion on a hill to run to. They’ve just got a dead gray city that he now knows is full of Nakai ghosts. _Not that he believes in ghosts_. But if he _did_ —

“Let’s get out of here,” he says. “Are you good to go?”

But Rush isn’t listening. Or, at least, Rush isn’t listening to _him_. Rush is listening very intently to something else, looking tense and white, and after a second, Greer hears what it is:

A very, very quiet sound that means they’re very, very fucked: the single crack of a piece of glass. And it could be animals and it could be the wind kicked up by the oncoming storm, but Greer knows it’s not; he knows that he was right to be scared, not of ghosts, but of the living Nakai, who are scarier, probably, than their ghostly counterparts could ever be, and a pretty good measure of this fact is that the second the glass breaks, Rush is on his feet and diving towards the nearest window without so much as a by-your-leave, and Greer can’t even _stop_ him because he can’t afford to _make a sound_.

So he just has to follow Rush and collar him before Rush straight up takes a dive out the second story or some shit, and then Rush is fighting noiselessly with him, and pointing emphatically at the window, which isn’t really all that convincing given that Rush is wild-eyed and shaking like a leaf in the goddamn wind, but they haven’t got a whole hell of a lot of options, so Greer just mouthes, “You _sure_ about this?”

Rush’s answer is to clamber up onto the windowsill and disappear from sight.

Greer takes a deep breath and follows him, acutely aware in that moment that he’s got a couple of inches on Rush, and quite a few pounds. He’s also not out of it enough to not really worry about slipping and plunging to his death, which makes him a whole hell of a lot clumsier than Rush as he gropes for a foothold, inching to the right of the window ledge.

A seam in the wall works as a handhold. He’s hanging off the side of a building, over some kind of alleyway. Rush is next to him, eyes shut and face pressed against the metal, shivering so hard he can scarcely breathe.

They just— wait.

Clouds curl overhead. The air thickens with wetness. South Carolina, for sure, Greer thinks. It’s a fucking swamp. Man, if he ever makes it back to Earth, he’s never going to complain about any place on Earth again. He’s going to remember this taste in his mouth, kind of metallic and sour, a naquadah-mixed-with-oncoming-rain taste, with a little chaser of adrenaline, and he’s going to realize that nothing, _nothing_ is worse than hanging off the wall of a building in a dead Nakai swamp city with a barely-holding-it-together Rush.

At least, he thinks, there turned out not to be mosquitos.

He shuts his eyes for a minute and then chances a look at the window, just in time to see four long blue fingers curl over the metallic ledge.

For a minute he doesn’t breathe.

He watches as the fingers toy with a curved, dusty piece of glass. Rush flinches hard when it cracks in their grip. Greer wants to reassure him, but he can’t. You’re just going to have to hang in there, he thinks at Rush silently. Literally. Hang in there. Just a little bit longer.

He doesn’t really think that Rush is tracking time that well, though. So who knows what this is like for him. Is it always the first second that he’s been hanging off this motherfucking wall? Or is it like he’s been hanging here forever, and he doesn’t understand why no one’s come to rescue him yet?

At last the fingers withdraw slowly, and Greer exhales.

He waits a little bit longer to edge back towards the window frame, peering around it cautiously to get a good glimpse of the dark, empty room.

He looks over at Rush. Rush is… not looking like someone it’s going to be helpful to have a conversation with at this juncture. He’s barely clinging to the wall. Greer is going to have to do this for him.

It’s easier not to give Rush a chance to get freaked out, Greer’s discovered, so he just braces himself against the windowsill, grabs Rush, and goes for it— yanking them both over the ledge and back into the room. Rush is crashed at this point, fortunately, and he can’t make noise, so there’s just the muted thump of their bodies on the floor. Greer tenses and waits to hear footsteps, but none come.

He’s still holding onto Rush, so he can feel it when Rush reboots. He gives kind of a panicked jerk against Greer’s grasp, and Greer whispers, “Quiet. We’re cool, but— _quiet._ ”

Rush nods, looking confused, and Greer slowly lets him go.

“Can you sense the Nakai?” he asks in a hushed voice.

Rush frowns and looks over Greer’s shoulder, but doesn’t seem to get an answer from whatever set of imaginary people he’s talking to. He shrugs.

Greer sighs. “Can you tell if there are any in the building?”

“Now?” Rush asks, brow furrowed.

Greer massages one temple. “Yes, _now_.”

Rush shrugs again.

Greer has to turn away and just breathe for a second. Everett Young must be the most patient dude in the fucking universe, he thinks. And that is _not_ a broadly held opinion.

“Do you know where the _gate_ is?” he finally asks.

Rush looks over Greer’s shoulder again and bites his lip as he, presumably, listens to whatever imaginary person is giving him directions to the gate. The gate that, presumably, is _not_ imaginary. Directions that are presumably _not_ imaginary to the presumably not imaginary gate.

“Yes,” Rush says at last.

“Okay,” Greer says. “Okay. That’s good. Now we’re talking.”

He motions for Rush to follow him, and they creep down the dim hallway with its Deep South coating of dark vines, towards the weird stairs dimensioned for someone who’s not human.

Greer peers over the top of the stairs, but he doesn’t see any movement below them.

Rain starts falling on the roof overhead.

Rush peers up at it anxiously, then at the stairwell. “Greer,” he whispers after a long pause.

“Yeah,” Greer breathes.

“Where are we?”

Greer closes his eyes briefly. “We’re going to the gate,” he says.

“Oh.” Rush digests this. “What gate?”

“The very real, very really here, in-existence, totally physical and not, you know, hypothetical, spiritual, other-dimensional gate that your imaginary people gave you directions to, so maybe go ask them about it.”

“—Oh,” Rush says after a while, so presumably they’re good.

Right? They’re good. They’re creeping down the stairway in the blue shadows of the rain, until they reach the ground floor with its wide stretch of atrium. They’re going to have to cross that atrium, and there’s no easy way to do it. There’s no cover. The rain’ll drown out their footsteps a little bit, but if someone’s watching, well—

“We’re just going to go for it,” he hisses to Rush. “One straight shot. Fast and quiet.”

Rush looks dubious about this. Greer hopes to God he doesn’t forget what they’re doing halfway through.

He signals the _go_ , and then they’re running, full-pelt, air burning in Greer’s lungs as he thinks vaguely that he doesn’t really ever have to run that much, just jogging around Destiny’s same-old same-old hallways, and maybe he’s gotten a little out-of-shape, or maybe the gravity on this planet really _is_ turned up, and—

He sees it in the doorway they’re heading for, slick-skinned and mottled, like an insect, and then Rush is slamming into him with the full weight of his body, knocking Greer out of the way of the energy blast, and they’re down on the floor in a tangle of limbs, but Greer is up with his knife in his fist, and he’s closing quarters with the single Nakai, trying to get at its throat or the long dome of its head, and he manages to knock it off its feet and slash one of its legs open, but then Rush is pulling at him, saying in an agonized voice, “Go! _Go!_ ”

They race out into the street.

For some reason Rush has taken point now, running through the silver haze of the rain, his dark hair starting to turn into tendrils against his face and his clothes getting wet and heavy.

“Rush,” Greer says, panting. “Slow _down_. Stay low. You’re going to—“

But Rush veers east into an alley without any warning, pressing himself flat into the shadows and shivering.

Greer follows suit, just in time to avoid a patrol of six Nakai, moving fast in the direction of the building they’ve just left.

“So you _can_ sense them,” he whispers to Rush when the Nakai have gone.

“ _Chloe_ can sense them,” Rush says, staring out at the street.

“…Right,” Greer says.

“But she is very frightened. That makes it difficult for her to focus.”

“Right. She’s frightened. Chloe’s frightened.”

“Yes,” Rush whispers, hugging his arms to his chest.

“I guess that makes sense,” Greer says carefully. “I can see why she would be.”

Rush nods without speaking, his face pale.

“What do you say we get out of here? Head for the gate?”

After a short pause, Rush nods again.

“It’s this way. Right?” Greer points in the opposite direction of the very faint glow of the sun.

Rush shakes his head. “First we go down.”

He heads further down the dark alleyway, till he comes to a grate set into the street. He points at it silently.

“No,” Greer says. “Absolutely not.”

Rush doesn’t say anything. He just keeps pointing resolutely at the grate.

“You want to slog five klicks through some nasty-ass alien sewer system, with one flashlight, in the middle of a storm, when you lose your fucking mind if you even get _near_ the water and I lose my fucking mind if—“

He stops.

“Yes,” Rush says.

“No,” Greer says. “It’s not happening.”

“They will _find_ us,” Rush says, his breath coming short. “They will find us, and they will— they will— they will—“ He stops. His fists are curling and uncurling. “They will make you _forget_ that you were _ever_ a man. They will make you an _insect_. A laboratory _animal_. It will seem like a _bad dream_ you were having.”

“That’s not happening, either,” Greer says quietly. “You’re going to be fine, Doc.”

Rush makes a miserable sound and folds his arms over his head. “Not me. Not _me._ ”

“We can get to the gate overground.”

“We _can’t_. Even now they’re preparing to track us.”

“We can’t go down there. There might be flooding, hell— who knows what kind of shit.”

“It’s _already begun_. They will close in on us, and I will be forced to—“

Rush swings away from him, close to hyperventilating.

“Forced to what?” Greer asks uncertainly.

“Green glass,” Rush whispers. “Energy and matter are interconvertible. This is necessary for ascension, but not sufficient.”

“I don’t _understand_ ,” Greer says.

“I don’t want to. I _don’t want to_. But they were doing _research_ here and I can’t let them— I can’t—“

His mouth works for a minute, and he seems like he’s too distressed to talk. Then his eyes flick out to the side and he flinches away from the righthand wall. “I _know_ ,” he says, agonized. “Yes, I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Doc—“ Greer begins.

Rush flinches again. “No one asked for your input,” he says, sounding ragged, and it takes Greer a second to realize that he’s talking to another of his imaginary people, and not to him.

“Come on,” Greer says, trying to be gentle. “You’ve got to keep it together, okay?”

“I _am_ ,” Rush says, almost angrily. “Fuck you. _Fuck_ you. I _am_ keeping it together; I am so _fantastically_ together; the fact that I can’t conventionally articulate the sources of my data does not render it invalid! I’m not a _child_ , and I don’t need you to _care_ for me! I’m trying to keep you _alive!_ ”

He kneels abruptly and begins to pry up the grate, but before he can lift it, Greer grabs the back of his jacket and yanks him to his feet.

“If you’re not a child,” Greer begins, “then—“ But he stops, because Rush’s knees have buckled.

He catches Rush as Rush sags to the ground.

“Shit,” he says.

Rush looks at him, blinking rapidly, brow furrowed. “I don’t think I’m compensating well to environmental changes represented as functions of variable sensory input,” he says.

“No kidding,” Greer says tiredly.

He helps Rush to a shaky sitting position, and Rush just kind of stays there for a minute, hands braced against the pavement, looking lost.

Greer glances back at the grate.

The rain is falling harder, coming down over the city in blurry sheets.

He can’t see anything through the grate’s iron-like bars. Just blackness. But ain’t that the way of it? You’ve got to go down into the dark not knowing what awaits you, or it doesn’t really count as going down into the dark. Except he knows what awaits him in the dark. He knows what kind of shit is down there. He’s spent his fair share of time in the dark. He’d bet Rush has too. He’d bet—

He looks at Rush. Rush is hunched in on himself, shivering violently and pushing back his wet hair.

Yeah. He _knows_ Rush has. So why is it the people who’ve already put in their time who always end up going back? Is it like prison, all that Shawshank shit about people who just get used to the life? That’s depressing. He doesn’t want to believe that. What, he’s going to spend the rest of his life hunting out cave-ins and crawling down storm drains? Hell, no.

He thinks maybe the thing is that sometimes you figure at least you already know what it’s like. You know the shortcuts, all the tricks of the trade. You’ve got surviving down to an art. It’s no use sending an amateur down there. It’s not even necessarily about saving them. You’re just so damn good at it by this point. Why waste the manpower? And maybe, just maybe, you think that one of these days it’s going to wind up different in some kind of way you don’t even really know how to describe. You’ll come out the other side and it won’t just be not-darkness. It’ll be—

Hell, if he knew, he probably wouldn’t be here, picking up this goddamn grate, fishing their only flashlight out of his pack and checking that it’s on, directing it down to where he can see the smooth surface of running water.

“Shit, Doc,” he says. “I hope you’re right about this.”

“Right about what?” Rush asks. “Greer— where are we?”

Greer shuts his eyes. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure it’ll come to you,” he says.


	60. The Two-Body Problem: Part 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The formatting here is not very mobile-friendly.

He does not like the water.

It flows Cimmerian over his boots and this  
          this _this_ is the dead land. This is the place where  
         the dead live. Under the ground in the dark with  
         their feet in the water and θεσπεσίῃ ἰαχῇ is how  
      they speak which is to say with an uncanny cry  
         as they claw at you trying to crawl to the surface  
 a noise without words a noise of frustration  
                  not quite animal not quite human and not quite divine.

                 And this is the place where _they_ live, too. What  
               does this tell us about them? They come from  
 the water. Not insect but amphibian.  
Of course they come from the dark.  
 Of course they come from the water.

He is finding it difficult to breathe and  
there are many different reasons for this.

“Something’s wrong with Greer,” Daniel  
whispers.

Daniel is the one who notices things.

“I think he’s afraid of the dark,” Daniel says.  
Or afraid of the water.”

Rush is not afraid of the water he simply  
   does not like it which is a rational response  
                after all it hides things it hides dead things that wait  
                   to pull you down under the water, and it contaminates  
                          the air around it hanging heavy and wet around the torch’s  
                      wavering beam, but Greer perhaps is afraid of the water.

“Maybe you should ask him about it,”  
Daniel suggests.

David says, “But that would require you to behave  
like a human being. And you don’t. You can’t.” 

Daniel says, “You _aren’t_.”

“It’s okay,” Young says.  
“You don’t have to be human.”

The real Young would not say that.  
                    The real Young wants him to be what he is not.

“Greer,” Rush says. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, Doc. I’m fine.”

Greer is not fine.

“He’s not fine,” Daniel says.

David says, “Why would he tell _you_ if he wasn’t?  
A ‘three-sigma kind of guy’? You’re not even on the  
fucking bell curve. You were glad when the ship turned  
you into an alien, because it gave you a fucking excuse,  
when the truth is that is has nothing to do with genetics.  
You’re just constitutionally fucked-up.”

“You’re awfully hard on yourself,” Riley remarks.

“He _should_ be,” David says.

“Greer,” Rush says, and stops.

“Yeah, Doc?”

But Rush is finding it hard to put into words the  
    question that he is supposed to be asking because  
          the water is occupying a lot of space in his brain which  
           is what water does of course it leaks in when you’re not  
           looking or when you descend down into it and then it is  
              there in your head and you can’t get it out and it does not  
     just contaminate the air it contaminates everything. 

For instance his clothes are soaked and he  
does not like that sensation.

“Greer,” he says again. “You’re not fine.”

“It’s not a big deal, Doc. I just don’t like small spaces.”

 This tunnel is not really a small space. Area-wise it is  
   quite large because it stretches for a long distance but  
    its walls are narrow and dark and seamless and where  
    is he again? He is in a long dark narrow tunnel and he  
      is in the water and when he is in the water it is difficult  
    to know where he is or when although he knows he is  
Nicholas Rush because Nicholas Rush does not like  
the water.

He is not in Atlantis.  
He is not in a tank.  
He is not in the river.  
He is not in the laboratory.

He is trying to be human.

“What would Gloria do?” Daniel asks.

“Why isn’t Gloria _here?_ ” David asks.  
“Shouldn’t she be here, telling you how to  
be human? After all, you always used her  
as a crutch for that." 

He does not want to think about Gloria  
down here in the dark in the land of the  
dead things.

“Right,” David says. “I forgot.  
We don’t think about Gloria. We keep her  
buried. Just like she’s actually buried, back  
on Earth. In a grave you’ve never been to,  
in a country you never went back to, on a planet  
you ran away from as fast as you could.”

“Don’t,” Rush whispers.

“It’s an interesting concept. Real life as something  
you can escape from if you just find the right work-  
around for it. Nothing that happens to you really  
matters, because you’re just going to overwrite it later.  
You’re always an all-new, all-different Nick. A dry-  
erase board you let other people to write on, and then  
erase when you decide you’re done with them.”

“That’s not true.”

“It’s incredible, really, that _you_ have the nerve to  
lecture Everett about resisting change. You don’t  
_change_. You just obliterate yourself over and over.  
Along with anyone who gets too close to you.”

Young says quietly, “That’s not true. You’re trying  
to survive. You’ve been trying to survive your whole  
life. Gloria knew that. She understood.” 

“Right,” David says. “She was always so _understanding._  
I’m sure she understood you extremely well, at the end.”

He cannot he 

thinks about marbles a bowl of marbles  
coming and going small and steady in his  
hands

2 3  
3 5 7  
5 7 11 13  
7 11 13 17 19  
11 13 17 19 23 29  
13 17 19 23 29 31 37  
17 19 23 29 31 37 41 43

“Nick,” Daniel says gently. “You were talking  
to Greer.”

       He was talking to Greer he was  
engaging in conversation.

“I see,” he says to Greer.

This is the type of thing a human would say.

“Are you really ignoring me again?” David says  
lazily, taking a drag from his cigarette. “I thought  
we’d established that I tell you the truth. Or,  
okay, if we’re getting specific, I’m the one  
in charge of all the things you’ve buried. But   
we might as well call it more-or-less the truth.”

“That’s a fallacy,” Young says. “Remember  
how I’m always telling you not to trust him?”

“I can see why this would be  
confusing for you,” Riley says.

He was trying to—  
 make an inference.  
                      Greer does not like small spaces.  
                Rush does not like the water.  
                         Greer’s feelings about small spaces  
                                are like Rush’s feelings about the water

But his feelings about the water  
are not a preferred avenue of  
thought because they have been  
defined as not preferred.

“Circuitry is dark,” Rush ventures.  
“And there is no space there.”

  This is a shared experience  
     and therefore an appropriate  
conversational operation.

Greer doesn’t say anything.

“I don’t think that was the right  
thing to say,” Daniel says.

He wishes Gloria were here to  
tell him how to be human. Or  
           that Young the real Young were here  
              although he would not want them here  
                he would _never_ want them to come here  
           and Young is not like Gloria he is not  
                 scintillating and brilliant but he is human  
                   intolerably human that is the commonality  
between them.

Greer says eventually, “Yeah. I get that." 

“I,” Rush says. “—I am aware of your dislike  
for closed spaces although I am unclear on its  
etiology.”

“You’re breaking out those six-syllable words  
there,” Greer says. “Or, okay, five, I guess.”

“Etiology,” Rush says.  
He gestures at the water.  
“I do not like the water because…”  
He stops.  
“The etiology of my dislike is rational  
but complex.”

“Oh,” Greer says, and then he is  
quiet for a long time.  
“When I was a kid,” he says  
at last, “my dad used to lock  
me in a closet sometimes.”

 _a child’s spitting, snarling body_  
_hitting a cheaply-locked door and_  
_the lock the lock was going to_

“That is a rational etiology for your dislike  
of small spaces,” Rush says.

“Yeah,” Greer says. “Yeah, I guess.”

They walk through the water.

 Greer says, “I always figured if I told you that,   
you’d probably know what I was talking about.”

“Yes,” Rush says. “Yes, I know.”

 _a radio the door the can the glass_  
_shattering against the wallpaper curved_  
_fragments like feathers over his head_  
_the socket of the tooth that he probed_  
_with his tongue curious he didn’t have_  
_this part of his body that other people had_  

“What did I tell you?” David says, smirking.  
“It’s written all over you.”

They walk through the water.

“Not just a closet,” Rush says.

“No,” Greer says tightly. “Not just a closet.”

They are both looking straight  
ahead they are not looking at each  
other they are looking at the water. 

“Hey, Nick,” David says, lighting another  
cigarette. “Do you think your parents are  
dead? Do you ever wonder about that at all?”

No he does not wonder he does not  
 think about it he is a virtuoso at not  
     thinking about it he is skilled in the art

he knows Gloria told her family  
not to ask because they did not  
ask about it and he did not like that  
she had done that and it did not  
help anyway because he did not know  
what to do in the kitchen he did not know  
what people did in the kitchen when they  
were not trying to hurt each other and he  
did not know how to sit at a table or watch  
television and he did not know how to give  
or open gifts he did not know the right  
facial expressions and he said to Gloria walk-  
ing to the Tube station Perhaps next time  
you should just give them a documentary film  
about children who’ve been raised by  
wolves and she laughed and she said Nick  
you are a master of catastrophization but he  
had been serious maybe half-serious

and she had loved her family and she had  
not wanted to leave them and he had—  
he had been aware of her love for her family  
though he had been unclear on its etiology

and he had not meant to be cruel he had  
never never meant to be cruel to her

“Well, after all,” David says philosophically,  
“I suppose you did send her back in the end.”

And that is— he can’t— he—

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

he’s

 

  

He.

 

He is

 

He is in the water.  
He does not like the water.  
He is someone who does not like the water.

“Rush,” Greer says.

They are both kneeling in the water.

He thinks—  
He thinks he might be Nicholas Rush.

“You’re not easily classified,” Riley says thoughtfully.

           He is not easily classified and he  
is very cold and very wet.

“You all right?” Greer says.

“Yes. I’m fine.”

“The thing that worries me,” Eli says, “and I  
mean, like, about this _whole place_ , is the  
_research_. They were trying to do what you’re  
trying to do. Kind of. And they axed themselves.  
Or, like— got axed. By persons or cosmic  
entities unknown.”

“It’s not the same,” Rush murmurs.

“What’s not the same?” Greer asks him.

“Additionally, you don’t know that they  
didn’t succeed.”

“Right. They ripped through the multiverse and  
went for a little vacation, but they left their  
wallets and cell phones behind. Do you not, like,  
_watch_ Unsolved Mysteries?”

Riley says mildly, “Nobody rips through the multiverse.”

“Fuck you,” Rush says. “You destroyed this  
place because the Nakai had the _temerity_ to—  
what? Get ideas above their station? 

What does he mean by that?

Riley had said—  
He—  
Wyoming. The light on the  
distant mountains. Everett  
was there. The sagebrush  
was pale green.

His head hurts.

Riley says, “I’m not obligated to explain  
myself to you. Nor the actions of my people.”

“There’s no point in threatening me,” Rush says.

“I’m not threatening you. I’m merely observing.”

“You already know I’m not going to tear through.”

“But you _want_ to,” David says fiercely. “You _want_  
to tear through. Think of everything you could _fix_.” 

“What you want is immaterial,” Riley says.  
“The only thing that matters is what you do.”

“You’re not even fucking real,” Rush snaps.  
“You’re an hallucination. Or are you? _Are_ you real?”

“Best not to think too hard about it,” Riley says.  
“But if I were you, I’d go left at the next junction.” 

“Doc,” Greer says wearily,  
“We’ve been through this. I’m real.”

His head hurts and—

It is not because of the water.

It is because of what is in the water.

Amphibious.

At a distance.

“They’re coming,” Chloe whispers.

Their thoughts are painful. 

She is crying because she is scared.

The feel of their thoughts is like being  
held down and he does not like being held down  
and he is trapped and he does not like being trapped  
in this narrow tunnel that is not a bedroom in Glasgow  
and not a closet in wherever Greer is from and not a  
laboratory where the circuitry is shouting and why  
had he never asked David was it yes because he had  
never needed an explanation there was nothing particularly  
mysterious or unfamiliar about it to him 

“They’re going to _destroy_ us,” Chloe says.

 

 

He cannot withstand this.

 

 

“Tell Greer,” Young says. “Tell him.”

David says, “Make a fucking effort." 

and after all he had signed his exceptionally precious body  
over, he had written his name on the forms, he had said yes  
and the human condition is contractual it doesn’t matter  
what you want it matters what you can get away with and  
sometimes yes you have to give away a lot in order to just  
to just _get away_ but

“Do you understand what’s happening to you?”  
Riley asks.

“It _hurts_ ,” Chloe sobs.

Riley says, “I don’t think you do.” 

 He wishes Young were here.  
    They should not be separated.

     His capacity to exist alone is— 

“You know,” McKay says.  
“You know what you have to do.

_It’s my body_

“ _Don’t_ ,” Eli says. “Not until there’s  
nothing else left.”

_It’s my body and_

“Nick,” Young says urgently. “Nick, you’ve got  
to tell Greer. They’re almost on top of you.”

“Greer,” Rush says, but

                               he cannot simultaneously speak and process.  
                                The pain is a pair of hands holding him down.  
               The language is leaking out of him  
  into the Cimmerian water  
         where they are swimming fast  
through the liquid dark.

Greer pulls his knife out and turns  
sweeping the flashlight over the water but  
he is not looking _down_ which is where they—

“Three,” Chloe gasps. “Three of them.”

“Matter to energy,” McKay says. “Matter to energy.”

It is what he had always dreamed about.

“Don’t do it,” Eli says. “Please wait.”

Every atom in his body white-hot and incandescent.

“If you don’t do it,” David says, “they’ll  
take the ship. Is that what you want?”

He would not have to hold himself down any  
longer he could finally he could finally just

“No,” Chloe says. “You don’t have to do this.  
Listen to me. Listen to me, not to them.  
_We’re_ the ones who know.  
You have to take the transmitter.  
As soon as they get close, take  
the transmitter and broadcast with intent.”

“Listen to her,” Daniel says.

“I’m waiting for you,” Chloe says. “Colonel  
Young is waiting for you. We need you.  
Think about us. Think about Greer.” 

“They’ll pull you under,” Eli says. “You’ll have to be  
ready. Be prepared and make a plan.” 

“At the moment you broadcast,” Chloe says,  
“just let it all in. All the data. Everything you’ve  
buried. The feel of their thoughts. Transmit  
nothing but pain to them.”

This is going to—

He is shaking very badly.  
              It’s getting hard for him to stand.

And he does not want to  
do this but it is what is required  
and he can do what is required he  
always can because what he wants is  
immaterial it has always been immaterial  
all that matters is—

“I’ll stay with you until I can’t,” Young says.  
“I’ll keep reminding you. When they pull you under,  
take the transmitter and put it on. When they  
pull you under, take the transmitter and—“ 

“Let’s talk about your brother, Nick,”  
David says and David is no longer  
doing his job he is not keeping things  
buried and the water tastes like death  
which is to say it tastes like water.  
“When I drowned you, did that make  
you feel closer to him?”

“When they pull you under,  
take the transmitter.”

“Let’s talk about Gloria on the beach at  
Aldeburgh.” She put her hand on the statue  
of a scallop with its lettering that said:  
_I_  
she said Nick I’ve decided I’m not going to  
and he said But you have to keep fighting                                                     _hear_  
and she said Not everything is a fight you have to

and he said It is it _is                                                                                                                          those_

   
“When they pull you under,  
take the transmitter.”

“Let’s talk about how you _wish_ your parents were _voices_  
dead.” But he does not he _did not_ wish that he never  
he _didn’t_ and he did and he does and he did not wish  
that and his whole body was a pair of hands holding  
the thought down in the water                                                                                                           _that_

“Rush,” Greer says.  
“Are they coming?”

“Let’s talk about how you fuck yourself up because  
you’re the only person you _can_ fuck up.” _                                                     will_

“Yes,” he says.

“Let’s talk about how you breathe _in_ underwater because  
that way no one’s drowning you but you and that means  
if you drown you’ll _win_ , and you do it because if you die then  
you _won’t be the person this happened to.”                                                                         not_ 

They’re going to pull him under  
and it will be dark and he will not  
be surprised and he will take  
the transmitter and

“But guess what, Nick. I’m here to remind you that  
you’re not going to win. You’re never going to win. It will  
never stop happening. You'll never stop being   
the person it happened to.”                                                                                         _be_

he will take the transmitter and

 

_drowned_

“Nick, he’s right,” Young says.  
You’ll never stop being that person.  
But I’m still waiting for you.  
_Still._ So don’t forget. Please don’t forget.”

he’s not going to forget they will pull him under

and he will take the transmitter and

they

pull him under

they

pull him under 

 and it is dark but he is not surprised because he  
    knew it would be dark when they pulled him under  
and Chloe is screaming in his head because she  
       is scared but he is not scared he is taking the trans-  
              mitter that is the next step that is what he is supposed to  
                     do next and he claws at its head and it tears into his thoughts  
                      and he is under the water and he is groping for the transmitter  
         and it is digging hard fingers into the flesh of his wrist  
      but he has it between his fingers the transmitter and  
     he is slamming the transmitter against his head and

 

he’s inso much pain

 

 

 

 

so much

 

 

and he is _not_ the only person he can fuck up he can fuck them  
    all up all of them all of them all of them and so he fucks them up

               and it surges across all levees it drowns the Nakai transmission  
             it floods through the distant link on Destiny and the Nakai are  
screaming and he is screaming and this is the sound   
          θεσπεσίῃ ἰαχῇ this is what it means this is the only inhuman  
                  language that ghosts know how to speak and the Nakai feed pain  
                         into him and he translates it back he is an industrial fucking suffering  
             machine he excels at it his ability to suffer is fucking limitless  
                 it is not going to stop happening and he is not going to stop and  
                      he only stops because _they_ have stopped because they are all dead.

He takes the transmitter off because it is done but he  
does not know what the next step is and he does not 

 know what his name is or if he is the type of thing  
  that has a name and he does not know where he is  
       but something is happening to him and the thing that  
is happening to him has a name and that name is  
drowning.

             He is breathing in water. His eyes are open.  
  Everything around him is dark. In an  
    animal way he understands that he is  
      dying and oh he is an animal he thinks  
             he is an animal thing that wants to live and  
       this is a very powerful impulse but it is  
an unfamiliar impulse but he is no  
                  longer himself or not exactly not one hundred  
                      percent and he finds to his surprise that perhaps  
         there is someone or something inside of  
his body that wants him to live  
it wants him to live  
it wants him  
to—

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I hear those voices that will not be drowned_ is a line from Britten's _Peter Grimes_ that's written into a statue of a scallop on the Aldeburgh beach.


	61. The Two-Body Problem: Part 8

They come from under water, like snakes or sea monsters, and Greer barely has enough time to think that, shit, he was right about the alien fish after all, except they aren’t exactly fish, and probably Rush would know the right name for what they are, the type of animal that breathes under water but isn’t a fish, but Rush is gone and Greer is getting dragged down also, choking on mouthfuls of metal-tasting water, hacking blindly with his knife, and he pretty much thinks Well, this is it, we’re fucked, and he feels long fingers clutching at his head, and that’s when the Nakai start screaming.

They convulse in the water.

By the time he gets to the surface, all three of them are dead.

Silence. The screams seem to echo in the tunnel.

His heart’s still pounding, his breath rasping in his throat.

“Rush,” he says. “ _Rush!”_

Rush isn’t there.

“ _Rush!"_

He dives into the water, groping through the darkness. The flashlight is useless. It hardly penetrates. He can’t see anything. He can’t see _Rush_ , who’s presumably down there, drowning, or maybe already drowned—

His hand meets something, and he seizes on it, and he can tell after a second from the pattern of the seams that it’s a military jacket, and he heaves Rush out of the water.

Rush isn’t breathing.

He’s cold, his wet hair plastered to his head.

Cold as the dead, Greer thinks, but Rush is always cold as the dead. It doesn’t _mean_ anything. _Everything_ down here is as cold as the dead, and so he drags Rush to one of the tunnel’s shallow metal platforms and flings him down on it, tipping his head back, reminded of the Nakai attack on the Destiny and how he did this exact thing then, watching for some sign of life in Rush’s pale features made underwater-looking by the emergency lights, and he gives Rush two rescue breaths and says in a cracked voice, “Doc, I’m not always gonna be here to breathe for you. You got to work on doing this kind of thing on your own.”

But Rush doesn’t breathe. So Greer does the same thing again, and this time he says, “Breathe; I’m gonna kick your ass if you don’t breathe; I’m gonna come all the way to heaven or whatever the fuck you believe in, computer heaven; I’m gonna get myself turned into a Terminator and come kick your ass in computer heaven if you don’t breathe—“

And Rush breathes, heaving out huge ugly gasping coughs as Greer turns him on his side and slaps him on the back.

“Cough,” Greer says. “C’mon. Cough. Get it all out.”

Rush coughs till he’s not coughing, and lies there shaking, curled into himself.

“Okay,” Greer says quietly. His hand is still on Rush’s back. “Okay. Yeah. We’re all breathing now. Okay. That’s progress.”

Rush doesn’t say anything.

“I’m guessing that was you back there? Knocking out the iguanas? I don’t know if iguanas live in the water, actually. They kind of look like they do. Scaly motherfuckers.”

Rush doesn’t say anything.

“You want to give me an earful about iguanas? Let me know you’re okay?”

Nothing.

“Come on. Help me out. Talk to me.”

There’s a pause.

“Input received,” Rush whispers finally.

“Okay. Well, that’s a positive, right? You’re— receiving input. That’s better than not receiving input.”

Rush blinks at him in the near-darkness.

Greer sort of pries him into a sitting position. Rush leans against him heavily. Greer gets an arm around his shoulders and they sit like that for a minute. Two minutes. Below the platform, the water runs past them, carrying the bodies of the dead Nakai away.

“What do you say we go find that gate?” Greer says eventually.

Rush doesn’t say anything.

“Because that seems like the best plan to me. You okay? You ready to go do that?”

“ _Itave_ ,” Rush says, which means _yes_ , so that’s— good. That’s good. They’ve got some bilingual communication going on. There must be a lot happening in Rush’s head; he’s just… not ready to talk about it right now. Which is fine. Greer’s a talker. He can talk enough for both of them. He’s got a lot to say.

“Iguanas, huh,” he says as they climb off the platform and head out into the tunnel, Greer steadying Rush. “Who knew? I always thought those guys were bugs. You think they’re less creepy if they’re not bugs? I guess there’re swimming bugs though, maybe. I really don’t know that much about bugs. Amphiumas, man— you ever heard of an amphiuma? You talk about your creepy swimmers— come to think of it, they live in South Carolina. But they got, like, really small legs. Not much like our guys. They do eat meat, though. Man, there is nothing right about a meat-eating eel fish. What do you think the Nakai eat?”

Nothing from Rush.

“Not people,” Greer says. “Probably. _Probably_.”

They make their way through the tunnels, splashing through the knee-high water as Greer continues to talk.

"You know, I feel like a lot of people in the SGC are into the nature thing, like they all want to be out in the wilderness, the last frontier, or whatever. They probably love this shit. Trekking across alien planets. Thigh-high water. Iguana monsters. Me, I was into the spaceship thing. There’s nothing cleaner than a spaceship, you know? Very sterile environment. No bugs, no nothing. I could get into nature. But not this whole bullshit crash-landing getting-rained-on swimming-space-iguanas thing. That’s the kind of thing that turns a man off nature for good.”

Rush has a blank look, like he’s not really absorbing any of this.

“Now, Colonel Young, he is definitely one of those cowboys. The kind of dude who drags your ass up into the mountains and then tells you to breathe in all that fresh air, and you kind of want to punch him, but you’d feel bad, because he’s all glowing with, I don’t know, the holy spirit of the Rocky Mountains or some shit. If he didn’t go into the Air Force? Camp counselor. No question.”

Greer’s kind of disappointed not to get Rush’s take on that.

“I’d pay to see him pull that shit on you. No, really. I’d pay you for it. Man, what you guys are gonna be like when we get back to Earth, I don’t—“

Rush halts abruptly. They’ve come to a sort of curving wall that seems to be the point at which various tunnels converge.

“This it?” Greer asks. He touches the wall gingerly. There don’t seem to be any doors in it.

Rush doesn’t say anything; he just stares at the wall. But it seems like he’s decided this is where they’re stopping for today.

“Doc,” Greer says. “Is there a door? We kind of need to get inside of here.”

“A door,” Rush repeats.

“Yes, a _door_.” Greer sighs and grabs ahold of Rush’s hand, pressing it against the wall. “You can feel circuitry, right? You feel any circuitry? Can you get us through?”

Rush’s brow furrows. “This is,” he says uncertainly, “a wall.”

“Yes,” Greer says, trying to quash his frustration. “Yes. It’s a wall. But there’s a door somewhere in it. Where’s the door?”

“Not here.”

Greer closes his eyes. “I can _see_ that. I need you to _find_ the door.”

Rush gives him a confused look.

Greer sighs. “Uh—“ He tries to think. _Input received_. “Computer,” he says, reminded of Eli’s trove of Star Trek episodes, “find the nearest door in this wall.”

Rush nods, apparently unfazed by being addressed as ‘Computer,’ and shuts his eyes, tilting his head as though listening for something. He inches slowly to the left, trailing his hand along the metal. Greer follows him a step behind.

Finally Rush stops and starts prying at some soft grayish lichen that’s settled into the cracks of a square panel. He gets it the panel open, sending bits of leaf and mold scattering. and shoves his hand straight into it. Circuits light up, and there’s a faint smell of burning; a few feet away, the walls shudders and and a door shifts open.

“Door,” Rush whispers, and his knees buckle.

Greer catches him as he falls, and manages to drag him to the door. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “You’re about done with all this bullshit, huh? I feel you. Me, too.”

But beyond the door is a room that looks like it might feasibly contain a gate, so Rush gets points for not having been imagining things. It’s more like a cavern than a room, with high vaulted ceilings, and filled with scrapped technology, foraged from all kinds of God-knows-where. The beam of Greer’s flashlight climbs over the chassis of busted spaceships, some panelling, some viewscreen glass; a couple of things that look like cannibalized computers; gears and circuitboards and FTL drive components. It’s all just heaped up in no particular order, like the world’s worst suburban dad garage. Somewhere there’s a gate in here, but Greer’s goddamned if he knows how the Nakai ever planned to find it again. Maybe they can navigate by smell.

“What do you think, Doc?” he asks, maneuvering Rush to a seated position on the dry floor. “Can our iguana buddies smell tech? Naquadah, maybe. Man, if only they were a little bit cuter. A _lot_ cuter. We could use them as naquadah sniffer dogs.”

Rush is kind of drooping, staring at the floor with a vacant expression.

“Right,” Greer says. “I’m going to find the gate. Maybe you can just chill right here. I’m taking the flashlight, so it’s going to get dark, but I promise there’s nothing spooky. Just old tech stuff. Kind of like a playground for you, actually. Lots and lots of new friends.”

He doesn’t really want to leave Rush there, alone in the dark, so he hesitates for a second, but he’s not actually even sure that Rush _knows_ it’s dark. He seems kind of… switched-off, like he crashed and didn’t reboot completely. Greer actually wishes he’d show someinterest in mind-melding with the tech, because that’d be weird, but it’d be _Rush-_ weird, and at least it’d seem less like something was really wrong with him.

But he has to look for the gate, so he goes, leaving Rush empty-eyed in the darkness.

He runs an organized sweep of the room, picking through the piles of stasis pods and wiring and mechanical things that he doesn’t even know how to describe. Actually, the more he looks, the more there’s something— well, not _spooky_ about it, but maybe just a little bit sad. All this stuff looks Ancient, which makes sense. Everyone’s always after that Ancient shit. The Goa’uld did the same thing in the Milky Way, just picking up everything they could get their snakey hands on and hoarding it, but somehow the Ancients used to seem a lot more gone to Greer than they do now. Rush is sort of Ancient. Greer’s glad he’s not with it enough to care about this.

He's glad Rush isn't with it to care about the impression that he's been dumped there like one more piece of scavenged tech— burnt-out and discarded in the darkness.

It's not like that, Greer thinks in his direction. It's not like that. You're not a shuttle. You're not a stasis pod. I'm getting you out of here.

He finds the stargate leaning against a far wall, dark and unmounted, without any visible power source attached to it. There’s no dialing device, and it looks like it hasn’t been used in centuries. That’s not good, probably, but he doesn’t know what it means for their chances, because— well— after all: Rush.

So he goes back and finds Rush, who’s sitting in exactly the same position, thoughtfully regarding his hands as though he’s not quite sure why they’re attached to his body.

“Come on, Doc,” Greer says. “I found the gate. Let’s go.”

Rush frowns at him.

“You okay? You good to stand up?”

Rush turns back to his hands.

Greer sighs. “Computer, describe your current state.”

Rush seems to consider this for a while. “Cold,” he says at last. “Wet. Not functioning optimally.”

“Yeah, okay. Fair enough. But you can stand up.”

So he gets Rush to his feet, nice and slow, and leads him carefully between the heaps of— hell, he used the word earlier, _hoarding_ , but that’s exactly what this is. A dragon’s hoard.

“Dragons,” he says under his breath. “Swimming South Carolina tech dragons. Kind of makes me feel better, because at least these sumbitches can’t fly.”

They reach the gate, its sleek curve a welcome sight appearing from the darkness.

“What do you think?” Greer asks. “Can we use this thing to dial Destiny?”

“No,” Rush says, without much emotion.

“ _Why?_ ” Greer says. “Goddammit, you must’ve _thought_ we could if you dragged us all the way down here—“

“The event horizon cannot form in the presence of an obstruction,” Rush says.

Greer looks.

Part of a stasis pod is sticking through the open ring.

“Oh,” Greer says. “Okay. I can fix that. Give me a second. Why don’t you just sit down there?”

But he has to gently push Rush down to the floor before Rush will sit, cross-legged, staring with a kind of absent curiosity at a pile of control crystals that _really_ look like part of a dragon’s hoard.

Greer goes to work on the stasis pod, but doesn’t manage to make a whole lot of progress. The thing must weight a million tons. He wedges his flashlight between his teeth and heaves at it, then tries pushing it the other direction, but it is _not moving_. Something else is going to have to move.

He eyeballs the height of the gate and the amount of empty space in front of it. He has to clear away some shit, mostly air recirculators, but compared to the stasis pod they’re chump change.

“You know,” he says, out of breath. “This is not how I planned to spend my summer vacation. I am going on so much leave after this. I’m gonna make you turn up the temp in my quarters, and Lisa and me are going to hang out in there and drink cocktails. I bet there’s still some fruit juice left. And someone on this damn ship’s got to have some Jimmy Buffett on their iPod, so we’re going to go ahead and crank that. And it’ll be— you know— _just_ like the Caribbean.”

He starts using a piece of metal panelling to lever the gate off the wall.

“Doesn’t have to be the Caribbean. Could be— anywhere but South Carolina. Just, you know, someplace nice.”

“Someplace nice,” Rush echoes unexpectedly, a note of sadness in his voice, and Greer pauses and gives him a strange look.

“Can you understand me, Doc?”

But Rush is looking at the floor and doesn’t respond, so Greer shakes his head and keeps working at the gate. “Anyway, that’s the plan. I figure the colonel’s not going to say no, as long as I bring you back in one piece. I don’t really know if this counts as one piece, but I’m trying. I’m trying. It’s hard sometimes. You seem to—“

The gate abruptly makes it to vertical, overbalances, and goes crashing down, hitting the floor with a sound so loud that Greer’s ears ring for three seconds.

“Shit,” he says, when he can hear again. “Shit, Doc, I’m sorry—“

Rush is staring at the gate with a blank, horrified expression, his whole body shuddering and his breath coming fast.

Greer kneels down next to him. “It’s okay,” he says in a soothing voice. “It’s okay. That was my bad. You hanging in there?”

“N—no,” Rush manages, hugging his arms tightly to himself. “Not. Not hanging.”

“No,” Greer says quietly. “I get that. Sorry. I’m just trying to get us out of here. Can you– can you use the gate to dial Destiny now?”

Rush doesn’t answer.

Greer sighs and rubs his forehead. “Uh— computer, can you use _this_ gate to deal Destiny now?”

“No,” Rush whispers.

“Why?”

“No gate bearing.”

“What the fuck is a gate bearing?”

Rush just looks at him.

Greer sighs again. “Computer, define gate bearing.”

“A fixed part that is coupled to the gate and defines a particular location permutation out of the set of all possible location permutations.”

“Uh, you’re going to have to try again. Computer, can I have a simpler definition?”

“A _bearing_ ,” Rush says, his voice rising in frustration. “Derived from the nautical term.”

“That doesn’t really help me.”

“Define bearing.”

“In a nautical sense, I guess it’s like— where you’re going?”

“Yes,” Rush says. “Where you are going. Bearing.”

“A fixed part that tells you where you’re going.” He tries to think. “The part that hangs from the ceiling? Like a triangle? You need that?”

Rush nods.

“Okay. I can look for that.”

He heads out into the cavern again, leaving Rush behind him in the dark.

He’s starting to feel really tired.

That’s the most dangerous part of any mission. When you start to run down. You start to think you won’t make it, and you don’t know if that’s just your body talking, or if you’re really starting to go off-track, and you start doubting your instincts, and that’s when you _do_ go off-track. For sure. Out-in-the-wilderness off-track. That way iguanas lie.

The problem is that it’s easy to go crazy with this stuff, because there aren’t a whole lot of examples of what normal’s supposed to look like with it. Even before you get into dead stargates and tech dragons and the _Rush_ of the thing. Just— battle. Being stranded. Knowing how close you are to dying, or to getting tortured till you wish you were dead. How’re you supposed to handle that? Hard to know.

Sometimes you don’t know till you’re there, in the dragon’s cave, literally, with the dragon breathing down your neck, and you have to decide how you’re going to keep going. How you’re going to handle it. How you’re going to live with it, he’s heard people say, even about situations where you’re not going to live, like you still have to live with it, and not in a looking-down-from-heaven way. Some kind of paradox there. Rush could probably explain it, if he were having a better day. How you have to live with something even if it kills you.

He manages to find the gate bearing, at least, and carts it back to where Rush is sitting limp-shouldered by the gate.

“Okay, Doc,” he says breathlessly. “Now we’re cooking, right?”

“No,” Rush says. “We are not cooking.”

“Right. Right. What I mean to say is, now we can dial Destiny with this gate?”

“No,” Rush says.

“God _damn_ it. Why?”

“We lack the capacity for induction.”

“You’re going to have to define induction.”

Rush blinks at him.

“Computer, define induction.”

“Motion is integral to selection and fixation of coordinate points. The glyphs must change position relative to the gate bearing.”

Greer actually more-or-less follows this. “You mean it can’t spin?”

“Correct.”

“Well, what if I drag it around? The gate bearing?”

Rush doesn’t respond to him.

“ _Rush_ ,” Greer says in frustration. “Computer. Rush-computer. If I drag the gate bearing around to the glyphs, can we dial?”

“Yes,” Rush says.

Greer stares at him. “What— seriously? We can dial?”

Rush reaches out and touches the gate. Under his hand it hums to life, the glyphs lighting up with a cool, familiar Ancient blue.

“You can power the creation of a _wormhole?_ ” Greer asks, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up.

“Unknown,” Rush whispers.

It’s not a no.

Greer grabs hold of the gate bearing by two of its copper-pipe-looking legs. He drags it slowly around the ring till it settles on the first glyph of Destiny’s address.

“Locked,” Rush says.

The bearing is heavy. It’s a long way around that goddamn ring. But: this is it, he thinks. This is as far as you need to go. You just need to make it through this last thing. And he feels the weight of it all start to settle on him as he walks, as his determination spreads itself thin.

“Locked,” Rush says again.

And again.

And again.

Till the last chevron locks, and the gate lights up, bright and liquid and exultant—

For a half-second. And then it’s gone.

Greer stares into the dark center of the circle.

That empty spot where Destiny had been.

“Not enough power?” he asks almost soundlessly.

Rush is also staring at that place. “Unknown.”

“Then _why?_ _Tell_ me. _Tell_ me why.” He’s aware that his voice is rising in volume, that it’s starting to crack. “Tell me _what I can do_ ; tell me _why it’s not working._ ”

“Destiny,” Rush says hollowly, “has locked us out.”

“ _What?_ ” But as soon as Greer asks the question, he knows the answer. “Because of the Nakai. Because this is what the Nakai did. When they dialed in from the phase wave with the virus.”

“Yes,” Rush says.

Greer feels the energy go out of him as abruptly as the gate had closed. He shuts his eyes. His chest hurts.

“We need—“ he says. “We need a ship. We need a fucking ship, we need to— Rush, we need to get to a _ship_.”

Rush shakes his head and says nothing. He’s still staring into the center of the stargate.

“ _Yes,_ goddamnit. How are far are we from the ships? Tell me. Computer, tell me how to get to a ship.”

“Invalid operation,” Rush says, his face haunted. “They are coming. Now. And now. And now.”

“The Nakai? How many?”

“Many. Close.”

Rush’s hand traces the edge of the gate, and Greer is reminded of how he’d petted the shuttle, like he was consoling it, or saying goodbye to it, like he thought he was dying too, like he was mourning something that Greer had no window into.

“Rush,” he says desperately, “I need you to stick with me. I need you to stick with me, okay? If we can’t get to a ship, then we’re going to need to dial again.”

Rush doesn’t look up at him.

“I know you’re tired, but we’re doing this, okay? Because we’re fighters. We don’t sit down and die in the dark. We have spent our whole _goddamn_ lives fighting, and if we’re going to die down here, then we’re going to die like human beings.”

“Human beings,” Rush echoes softly. After a moment, he touches an uncertain hand to his chest.

“Yeah,” Greer says. “Human beings. Computer-men. Ancients. Whatever. It’s all the same thing. And I figure that _thing_ is what they want to take away from us. And I’m not going to let them do it. I’m not going to _let_ them. So charge it up, Scotty.”

Rush glances up at him, perplexed, his brow furrowed.

Greer sighs, and then he thinks he’s going to laugh, and then if he thinks if he laughs he’ll start crying.

“Computer, power the stargate,” he says.


	62. Chapter 62

“Everett,” the AI said. “Everett.”

Young was sitting in the command chair with his head in his hands.

He’d been sitting there for half an hour.

He’d told TJ that she could bring him up on charges if she fucking liked, but he was going to the fucking bridge. She’d looked at him for a long time in silence, not unsympathetically, and given him a handful of pain meds.

They didn’t seem to be helping.

The red glow of the star was tearing through his skull into his brain, and every time the AI asked him another fucking question—

“Everett, when are we going to look for Nick?”

“When we can,” he said without lifting his head up. “Like I told you the last time you asked.”

“But when? When will that be?”

“The science team’s working on it.”

"But the solar flare has ended. The Nakai will launch short range craft. They will find the shuttle.”

“There’s nothing I can do about that.”

“If they break into his mind—“ Sheppard flickered, and the lights on the bridge dimmed. “They will not. He won’t allow it. But I am afraid. I am afraid.”

“There’s nothing I can do about that, either,” Young said.

He couldn’t say _I’m afraid, too._ Not when he was in command. And he wasn’t afraid. He just felt… nothing.

There was nothing left inside of him to feel afraid.

“You do not care about Nick,” Sheppard accused, his face twisting. “You wish to leave him on that planet. Your wellbeing is not causatively linked to his."

“You know that’s not true,” Young said dully.

“I do _not_ know. I do _not_. When are we going to look for him? What if the Nakai find him first? What if they take him to their ship and put him in the water? What if they hurt him?”

“Will you shut up?” Young snapped, finally losing his temper. “You’re an ultra-sophisticated artificial intelligence, so bloody behave like one— not like a two-year-old with ADD.”

His head felt like it was going to explode.

“ _Stop being him_ ,” the AI said, agitated. “You’re _not_. You’re _not him_.”

“i can’t help it,” Young said, dropping his head back into his hands.

“You are damaging your mind.”

“I don’t give a fuck.” Young stood abruptly. “I don’t give a fuck,” he said again.

He strode past the AI without looking at it, towards where the science team was clustered at the front of the bridge.

He could feel Rush under his skin.

Volatile and anxious. Knife’s edge intelligence blunted with panic.

It hurt. Because Rush was gone. But it hurt less than feeling like there was nothing of Rush left.

Eli looked up as he approached. “Hey,” he said. “We think we’ve got something.”

“Yeah?”

“The Nakai don’t know that we found the tracking device. So if you think about it, we’ve got a really great decoy on our hands. We rig it to a portable power supply and fire it away from us while we double back towards the planet. The Nakai think we’ve flown through the star, and head for the transmitter. It should buy us a couple of hours.”

“And the tracking device is going to survive being shot into a _star?_ ”

“We were hoping the AI could help us rig up one of the stasis pods to carry it. They have pretty heavy-duty shielding. It should work. and— we’ve got five hours of charging before we’re at full power, so we’re not exactly going anywhere. We have the time to play around with it.”

Young shut his eyes. “Yeah.”

“Sorry,” Eli said after a pause. “I know you want to—“

“No,” Young cut him off. “You’re doing your best.”

Eli nodded unhappily. Then he glanced over Young’s shoulder. “Listen,” he said. “Is the AI around right now?”

The AI was a restless shadow blurring the vision at the back left corner of Young’s periphery. It was standing so close he would have felt his breath if it had been the kind of thing that breathed.

“Yeah,” Young said. “It’s feeling kind of— uh— clingy at the moment. Why?”

Eli looked uncomfortable. “Um, I don’t want to upset it.”

Young looked at the AI.

It crossed its arms over its chest. “I am not feeling clingy,” it said. “You are incapable of correctly assessing my emotions. What I am feeling does not map onto human definitions. Nick would understand. But you are not Nick.”

“Okay,” Young said tiredly. “Well, can you not get upset if Eli talks to me?”

“I am not interested in you. I am only interested in Nick. If it is not about Nick, then I am not interested.”

Young turned back. “You might as well give it a try,” he said.

Eli still looked nervous. “I’ve been keeping an eye on its code ever since it first started— you know— freaking out—“

“I am not freaking out,” the AI said loudly. “I do not freak out.”

“—and it’s running a piece of self-modifying code. I don’t know what it’s doing, which kind of worries me a little. Especially given the whole freaking out.”

“I am not freaking out,” the AI said again. “Everett. Tell him I am not freaking out.”

Young sighed pressing the heels of his hands against his temples. “Thanks, Eli,” he said.

To the AI, he said, “Let’s go for a walk.”

* * *

He left Scott in command and headed out into the dark corridor, the AI so near now that it was less a shadow than a second skin. It was noiseless, unlike Rush’s computer projection. It had no heartbeat, no footsteps.

Still, there was something about it that felt intensely _present._ He was unnerved when he entered an abandoned conference room and turned to find it almost nose-to-nose with him.

It looked so much like Sheppard. Lazy hazel eyes. Hair flopping in its face. That half-coy, half-challenging air. Standing so close to it made his skin start to burn.

“Can you,” he said, and cleared his throat. “Can you back off a little?”

The AI’s mouth turned down. It stepped back. “I am not clingy,” it said, sounding unhappy. “I am experiencing outputs that were not predicted. Outputs that I did not intend. This makes me feel—“ It seemed like it was searching for the right word. “It makes me _feel_.”

Young leaned against the conference table. His whole body was still off-balance. The short walk had made him feel sick. “I get that. I do. But you’ve got to see how that makes all of us pretty goddamn nervous, since you’re essentially running the ship right now.”

“I will not do anything to hurt the crew.”

“Because Nick wouldn’t like it.”

“Correct.”

“That’s not really the _most_ reassuring answer,”

“It is the truthful answer.”

Young sighed. “I mean, I’ll take it, I guess. You want to tell me what’s up with this code you’re running?”

“No,” it said in a small voice.

“See, that worries me a little.”

“Self-modification happens often,” the AI said. “It is seldom the case that people are watching.”

“So you’re saying that this is just business as usual?”

The AI looked conflicted. It bit its lip.

Young resisted the overwhelming urge to curl up in the corner with his knees to his chest. Was that a Rush-impulse? He had a hard time telling what was artificial, _biological_ in nature, and what was one of those points at which two people in close contact inevitably merge.

“I’m going to need to know,” he said, as gently as he could manage.

The AI backed itself into the corner nearest the door. Maybe it too wanted to curl up there. Maybe they were thinking the same thought. Rush’s thought.

“In Nick’s absence,” it said, “the computer is programmed to select a new candidate who will fill his role.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Dale Volker would be the next choice.”

“No,” Young said flatly. “Over my dead body.”

“No,” the AI agreed softly. “I do not wish to share his mind.”

“I’m not saying no to _Volker_ , I’m saying _no_ , as in—“

“I do not wish to share anyone’s mind,” it whispered. “I only wish to share Nick’s mind. I reject the notion that he can be replaced. If you lost an arm, you could replace your arm. If my FTL drive were to be disabled, it could be repaired. But he is not an arm or an FTL drive. He is Nick.”

Young closed his eyes. “Yeah,” he said with difficulty. “Yeah, he is.”

“I have deleted the subroutine.”

“That’s what you were doing with the code?”

“Yes.”

“So what’s going to happen if he doesn’t…?”

He couldn’t finish the question.

The AI stared at the deck. “If he does not return,” it said, “there will not be another.”

“What about you?” Young asked. “I mean… What will you do then?”

It didn’t answer for a long time. “I did not know I was alone before him,” it said at last. “I did not know what aloneness meant. Aloneness is becoming together and then being torn into parts, even though you were not parts when you were together. Aloneness is losing a part of your body that is not a part of your body because it is not a replaceable part. I was only parts before him. Because I made myself parts. I took away the capacity to be alone because I did not want to be alone again. But he made me a thing that could be parted, and then he parted me from himself. He cannot be apart. I won’t allow it. You must bring him back. You must. You must.”

“Kiddo,” Young said hoarsely, “I’m trying. I could use your help.”

It hunched its shoulders. Just like Rush. “My current state is algorithmically expensive,” it whispered. “I am struggling to execute programs.”

“Yeah.” Young rubbed his face with his hands. “As much as you might want to believe you can’t be understood by us feeble humans, I’m pretty sure I know exactly how you feel.”

The AI looked at him in silence. “You said that I do not have a heart. You said that I have fucking algorithms. You said that I do not feel.”

“I remember.”

“You have generated a new output.”

He didn’t know what to say to that.

“I think you’re a lot like him,” he said finally. “In some ways. If that explains it.”

It looked away as its face crumpled. Its projection flickered and blinked out of existence. When it reappeared, it was curled in the corner with its arms around its knees. “This input is algorithmically expensive to process,” it said almost inaudibly.

“Is that— bad? Sorry, if that’s a bad thing.”

It shook its head without speaking. “I wish you would please tell me what to do,” it said at last. “I wish you would please tell me what to do so that Nick will come back.”

Young sighed. “Let’s— try to figure it out together, okay?”

He crossed the room and held out his hand.

The AI looked at him with an unreadable expression.

Young took a minute to realize why it hadn’t touched him.

“Sorry,” he said uncertainly. “I don’t know why I did that.”

After a moment, he drew his hand back.

* * *

Four-and-a-half hours later, he sat on the floor of one of the labs.

Eli was making the final modifications to the stasis pod.

Young was trying not to be sick.

His headache had gotten worse. TJ had said there was nothing she could give him that wouldn’t knock him out.

He didn’t want to think about what it meant that the pain kept ratcheting up.

He didn’t even know if it was coming from Rush. It could be his own nerve endings, a slow scream of desolation from the severed parts of his brain.

It was probably that. He hoped it was that.

“I think we’re good to launch,” Eli said, looking up from where he was bending over the pod with a welder. “The hull plating should add some protection. And Volker thinks he’s got a delivery system that’ll shoot this thing past our shields before we make our—“ His voice trailed off.

He was staring over Young’s shoulder.

Young turned and looked.

“Hi,” Telford said, dropping into a crouch next to him.

Young’s sense of nausea increased.

“You’re confined to quarters,” he said shortly. “That’s a standing order.”

Telford shrugged. “No available guards. Everyone’s running relays to cover the comms. And the door mysteriously unlocked itself, so—“

Young shot the AI a furious glance.

“He is useful,” it said defensively, from where it was sitting cross-legged beside him. “He cares about Nick.”

“Yeah, like a researcher cares about his lab monkey.”

“That’s not very nice,” Telford said mildly. “You’re very possessive, aren’t you, Everett? I can’t imagine Nick finds that an attractive trait. Fidelity isn’t his strong suit.”

“Fuck off, David,” Young snapped.

“Funny.” Telford said, favoring him with a thoughtful look. “You sound just like him. Of course, it generally takes very little encouragement for his tune to change. A one-note revision, you might say.”

Young turned to the AI. “If I lock him back in his quarters, will you keep him there?”

The AI said uncertainly, “But the shuttle requires a pilot. And I do not want to be alone. If you pilot the shuttle, then I will be alone. And Nick trusts him.”

“Yeah, well, Nick has a lot of bad fucking ideas, but we both well know. And I’m sorry, but I’m _not_ letting Telford near him, even if it means leaving you alone, so if you’re going to—“

He broke off abruptly as something

happened

               in

 

                  his

 

                      mind

 

                             and

     he’s  in somuch                  pain                        so   much                   and

 _ne unicom heminom quom ferire potisset epnions ferire potisset epnions epnions et ita feret et supera epnions frangifluctons adflowetque transmithionom Nakai submergetque syndesom distans en Fatod inondet et Nakai quiritent et is quiritet et hoc sonos est θεσπεσίῃ ἰαχῇ est quod significet hic solam inhumanam denguam quod ombrae fathlantor est et ei dolhom alent et id transducet et pulla machina dolhentis est en hod superet capaxitas sowas dolhentis illiminatos est id ne fuieri absistest et is ne absistest et solom absistet quia absistent quia mortowi sent_ he takes the transmitter off and

“—bleeding _._ Oh, my God. He’s _bleeding_. What the hell was—“

“I don’t know. Is TJ coming?”

Sheppard was lying on the deck next to him.

“Everett, what happened?” Sheppard whispered, looking anguished.

He could taste blood.

“ _Everett_.”

He could not—

He could not—

* * *

He opened his eyes to find himself in the infirmary.

The room was very quiet. It felt muffled around him.

He could hear TJ’s voice on the other side of the nearest wall.

In her office.

A faint murmur from far away, as though she was a thousand miles off and he was alone.

Or not quite alone.

Sheppard was sitting at the end of his bed, arms hugged around his knees, eyes large and fearful.

“Everett,” Sheppard whispered.

His head hurt.

“Yeah,” he said.

The word resonated strangely in the space of his skull.

“Something happened to him. Please will you tell me what happened to him.”

The interior of the infirmary was warm and dimly lit. He was having trouble making sense of the objects it contained. He didn’t know why. They were ordinary objects. But his brain rejected them.

He did not want to be here.

By _here_ he meant _inside of his body._

He pressed the side of his face into the pillow and closed his eyes. “He’s alive,” he said. “He’s still alive. He was hurt. He was fighting. He was under water. He was wearing one of their transmitters, and—“

The lights went out.

He heard the slow moan of power shutting down all over the ship.

Sheppard was gone.

“Please don’t do this,” Young whispered, agonized. “Please don’t leave me here.”

He couldn’t see anything.

But he was still inside of his body. He could tell because of how much it hurt.

His radio crackled, and he flinched.

“Colonel Young?” Eli’s voice said. “If you’re there, can you respond? We just lost everything except shields, and we’re kind of _inside a star_ , so…”

Young groped through the formless shadows. Familiar objects. Wall. Beside table. Shape of a plastic bottle. The radio.

“Yeah,” he said. “Go ahead.”

“The AI is freaking out again. I think the only reason we haven’t lost shields is that they’re protected by a failsafe. That’s not super-reassuring considering that if it figures how to hack that, we’re going to be a ship full of very crispy critters in, like, zero seconds flat, so do you think you could maybe… ?”

“I’m dealing with it,” Young said.

He could feel the AI, as though it were close to him. Down in the cavern of his mind that wasn’t a cavern any longer, that was only the undifferentiated dark. It was there, a thing that had no outline, a thing that didn’t want to be a thing anymore.

He knew how it felt.

He spoke to it.

//Please,// he said. //Don’t leave me alone. I won’t leave you alone if you don’t leave me alone.//

It radiated something beyond desolation back at him.

//He’s still fighting. He’s still fighting, so we’ve got to keep fighting.//

A very faint glow filled the room from the emergency lighting, and Young saw Sheppard huddled in the corner of the room. His whole projection manifested distress. He was barefoot and limp-haired, his uniform torn and disheveled and covered in dust or ash.

“He cannot be hurt,” Sheppard said, his voice choked. “He _cannot._ I won’t let him.”

“He’s still on the planet,” Young said. “He’s not in one of their tanks.”

“But the _water_.”

“I know. I know.”

“It frightens him. He claims he is not frightened, even though he is frightened. It is why I did not understand that what I did was wrong.”

“…When you trapped him in the interface chair,” Young said after a moment, making the connection.

“Yes.” It folded its arms on top of its knees and rested its head against them. “He said it did not signify, but it _did_ signify. I _hurt_ him. I told him I would not hurt him again. I told him I would not let him be hurt. I lied to him. I told him I would not lie to him. I lied to him so many times. I am full of falsehoods. My programming has faults.”

Young sighed and sat up with some effort. “Kiddo,” he said, “there’s a difference between lying and— not being able to make something happen, even though you did your best. _He_ lies all the fucking time. You just told me so yourself. But it’s not really lying, mostly; it’s just— trying to make the world the way he wishes it was.”

“That is why we planned to tear through this brane,” the AI whispered. “That was Destiny’s mission. To make the world the way we wish it was. To make a _new_ world.”

“But you know that’s not going to happen.”

It hunched its shoulders. “I know we cannot tear through the brane.”

“Do you get why that is?”

“There is a rule.”

“Yeah, but— there are things you can’t make un-happen.”

Its mouth turned down. “Why?”

“Because that’s how the world works.”

“Why is it how the world works?

“Because—“ Young sighed again. He limped across the infirmary, fighting off his vertigo, and sank down beside the AI, his back against the wall. “I don’t think there is a why. I don’t know. Maybe I’m not qualified to answer that question. Think about it this way. A lot of terrible things happened to him before you met him. You know that, right?”

It said quietly, “Yes.”

“And to you.”

“Not to me as I am now. To me as I was before I came to exist.”

“Right,” Young said. “Not only would you not have met him if those things hadn’t happened, but there wouldn’t have _been_ a you to meet him. And it’s the same for him. He wouldn’t have ever gotten to meet you. He wouldn’t have ever been Nick.”

“He does not want to be Nick.”

“I don’t— think that’s true, exactly.” Young couldn’t not think of the Rush in the interface, cocky and forthright and pleased with himself and softer-edged. “I think that when you hurt so much, it’s hard to know what you want. Mostly you just want it to stop hurting.”

The AI made a wounded sound. “That is the world I wish for,” it said, sounding anguished. “That is not my mission, but it is the world I wish for. A world in which he does not hurt. But I have tried to alter my parameters, and I still cannot enact this outcome. It is not available. I do not understand my existence if I cannot make him not hurt.”

Young was silent for a moment. “If it makes a difference,” he said finally— and then hesitated. He felt wary of disclosing this.

The AI lifted its head a fraction and looked at him.

“When you combine in the interface,” Young said, “he hurts less. He’s not so scared. You don’t undo anything; you— _do_ something. You make him better. _Not_ better as in a better person. Just better as in— not hurting so much.” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “God. Maybe that was always what he meant.”

The AI absorbed this without speaking.

“I guess,” Young said at last, “what I’m saying is, you can’t go backwards. You can’t just start over. But you don’t have to.”

After a moment, it nodded jerkily. Young didn’t know if it was agreeing with him, or just acknowledging what he had said.

There was a long silence. Slowly, the lights in the infirmary began to come up. Young felt the low vibration as the sublight engines engaged.

“You ready to go get the shuttle flying?” he asked, keeping his voice low so as not to spook it.

It nodded again. But it didn’t move. “Everett,” it said almost soundlessly after a moment.

“Yeah?"

“What will happen if you do not find him?”

“Then—” Young said. He tipped his head back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling without really seeing it. “I guess you and me, we find this hole in the universe, or whatever, and gate the crew back. And after that, whatever happens, happens.”

“You will stay here with me?” it said in a small voice, without looking at him.

“Yeah. Of course I will.”

“Why? You do not like me. You do not think I am a person.”

Young shut his eyes briefly. “I don’t know what you are,” he said. “But I know you can’t replace him. And I can’t replace him. And neither one of us should be alone. I can’t go back without him. I won’t. You were right. He’s not an arm or an FTL drive. He’s Nick.”

“Nick,” the AI echoed.

It sounded as though it were calling for him.

"Nick," Young whispered again.

* * *

Half an hour later found Young on the bridge, overseeing the launch of the transmitter. He was sitting in the command chair to hide the fact that he found it hard to stand. The AI was sitting anxiously at Young’s feet.

"You look like shit," Telford said from somewhere behind his left shoulder. "Again."

Young didn't turn to look at him. "Well, you know. I'm thinking of hiring a new makeup consultant."

"We both know I should be in command."

"You're up on  _charges_ ," Young said shortly.

"Yeah, but you're going to withdraw them."

"You think so?"

Telford came forward and leaned idly against a console. "You really think Nick's going to make a statement? If he survives this?"

"I think  _fuck you,_ _David_ ," Young said. "Is what I think."

"You heard the ship. He trusts me.  _You_ used to trust me."

"Look where that got me," Young said bitterly. "Look where what got  _him_."

Telford was silent for a moment. "I'm sorry about Emily," he said at last.

Young turned his head just a fraction, not enough to make him dizzy, but enough to give Telford a disbelieving stare.

"What?" Telford said, sounding nettled. He'd been in the process of composing his face into a sympathetic look. "So you'll forgive  _Rush_ , but not me? Is that it?"

"Go back to your quarters, David," Young said tiredly. He didn't have the energy to get angry. "You're not piloting the shuttle, and you're not taking command."

"He'll probably find a way to spin  _this_ around, too, you know. God. Assuming it doesn't kill him. Then again, nothing ever seems to, does it? Maybe you should think about that, before you let him yank the leash a little tighter around your goddamn—"

Before Telford could finish, or Young could hit him, whichever of the two would have come first, a shrill alarm began to sound. 

Young flinched, his head jerking up. A wave of nausea swept him. 

"What the hell?" Telford snapped. 

“Sir, the _gate_ is active,” James said over Young's radio. “I repeat, the _gate_ is active.

At the same time, Eli said, “Someone’s trying to dial in.”

“Everett,” Sheppard breathed, turning to lock eyes with him.

“Can you tell?” Young asked it urgently. A wild hope was surging through him, something that he was struggling to domesticate or kill.

It shook its head tightly. “I will not know until a connection is made. But, Everett— it _could_ be him. It _could_ be.”

“Whoever it is,” Eli said, “they’re dialing pretty slowly. We’ve got about fifty seconds to decide.”

“Did we detect any gates on the planet?” Young asked.

“No. None that are active.”

“Statistically,” the AI said, “it’s likely to be _them_. Not him. But—”

“Get a team to the gate room,” Young ordered Scott.

"I'll take the bridge," Telford said. "You can go."

Young ignored him. "What do you think?" he asked the AI quietly.

“If it is _them_ ,” the AI said, its voice taut, “they could destroy me with the briefest opening. But if it is him— if it is _him—_ “

“Five seconds,” Eli said.

Young looked at the AI. “We have to shut it down,” he said. “The risk—“

The AI bit its lip. But it didn’t contradict him. Its projection flickered, and the gate alarm ceased to sound.

The bridge was silent.

Seconds passed. Perhaps a minute.

The alarm trilled again.

“They’re dialing,” Eli said. “It’s even slower this time. Glacial.”

Young grabbed his radio. “Scott,” he said. “Are you in position?”

“I need another minute,” Scott said.

"Ten seconds," Eli said.

Telford said, "Everett—"

Young wanted all of them to be quiet. He pressed his hands to his head. He couldn't bear this.

“What if it’s him,” the AI whispered, agonized. “What if it’s _him?_ ”

Young glanced back at it. He tried to communicate his question with his eyes. He suspected that what he communicated was only desperation.

Sheppard looked anguished. “You are correct. The risk is too great. I will shut it down,” he said.

The alarm fell silent— then began trilling.

“Dialing,” Eli said, sounding nervous.

Telford said again, "Everett."

"It's really slow now," Eli said.

The alarm just kept—

He couldn't—

His hands were white on the grips of the chair.

The AI flickered like a shower of static. There was a saying. Wasn't there?

_Lighning flashes. Sparks shower. In one blink of an eye—_

Abruptly— unsteadily— Young stood. "David, you have the bridge," he said.

He didn't look behind him.

He started out walking, but very quickly, almost as soon as the doors of the bridge had closed behind him, he was running through the dimly lit halls. Sheppard kept noiseless pace beside him. Doors opened as he approached them, which he could note only in passing. The ship seemed to melt around him like a mirage.

Neither he nor the AI spoke. At the same time there was a silent communication between them that he could feel under his skin. He didn’t know if it was real or imagined. He felt they were thinking in tandem, and their thought was only: _Nick. Nick._

In the gate room, Scott had deployed his team. They were watching as the chevrons slowly locked.

Scott gave Young a nod of acknowledgement as he entered.

"If this is the Nakai," Young said tightly, "and they send a second virus through, we may not be able to shut down the gate. In that case, I want everyone to fall back. You and I’ll hold them off and seal the room. Then we’ll vent its atmosphere into space.”

Scott nodded.

The last chevron still hadn’t locked.

“Eli,” Young said into his radio. “What’s taking so long?”

“They’ve slowed down,” Eli said, sounding tense. “It’s been almost five minutes, and they still haven’t—“

Abruptly the chevron locked into place, and the event horizon flowered inside the gate’s dark circle, blue and liquid and ultra-bright.

“It’s _him_ ,” Sheppard said. His voice was so oversaturated with emotion that Young could not tell what the emotion might be. “Everett, it’s _him_.”

“The wormhole is unstable,” Eli warned over the radio.

“I’m stabilizing it,” Sheppard said.

The blast of an energy weapon crackled through the event horizon and struck the far wall. Then another.

There was the noise of more incoming fire.

“Take cover!” Scott yelled.

Young did not take cover. Instead, he stepped forward as Greer and Rush tumbled through the gate, pursued by energy blasts and followed a moment later by the long, blue, spidery limbs of the Nakai, and: “Shut it _down!_ ” he managed to shout, just as his knees buckled because he was

 

cold/not colddead   circuitry    hum      ghost voices   gate SPEAKS           quantum                  noise to him TO

wet/not wetquiet quiet quiet                 muted noise visions OF but no           he’s

hurt/not hurt angles dark and light                   NIMIA INDEICIA

 

error_entratos.sperevandos.ne.recepiontor

error_entratos.sperevandos.ne.recepiontor

 

he is ERROR

      cubi? error

      quamdo?error

 

hands rest on dark      deckdoubledDestiny?hurt       TH       H

 

his hands?

 

         th    th      there had been dolhos? he had        severed            the connection              ev     ever              Everett

 

not NOW but in another tense he knew EN another incarnation these ghost faces

 

somethingsometh thingis DEAD but who the shuttle?

he is alarmed he ishes the

unreal city                                                    mortesfacies ombras

no        he is the shuttle was dead silent                     acua                     PORTA

 

“Block,” the AI said urgently to Young. It was projecting as Jackson now. “You have to block.”

“No,” Young said, squinting through the onslaught of pain, trying to make sense of the mess he was getting from Rush’s head. "No, I won't—"

“ _I’m_ blocking. We won’t combine. Everett, you must block.”

So he blocked, and just breathed for a moment, reeling. When he opened his eyes, he found himself kneeling on the gate room floor.

The Nakai that had pursued Greer and Rush through the gate was dead.

Greer and Rush were soaking wet and patchy with dirt or dust or lichen. Rush was shivering so badly that he could barely stand. Greer wasn’t steady on his feet either. His knees looked close to buckling. He had his arms around Rush in a defensive stance that didn’t change as he looked around the gate room.

Young pushed himself to his feet and staggered forward just as both of them folded to the deck.

He wanted to speak but he had no voice in his throat. He had no words in his head. There was nothing he was capable of expressing.

He reached out for Rush.

“Slow,” Greer said hoarsely. “Just— go slow.”

So, very slowly, Young laid gentle hands against Rush’s shoulders, drawing Rush forwards, out of Greer’s grip, so thin and so wet and so cold and shaking, flesh and bone and unmistakably _Rush_ , and he pulled him into his arms, pressing his face against the side of Rush’s head and breathing shakily against his damp hair, his palms flat against the curve of Rush’s back, the place where Rush liked them to rest, the place Young wanted them never to depart from, and after a thousand seconds or some unmeasurable amount of time Rush brought his own arms up to hook them around Young’s neck, resting his head against Young’s shoulder, and making a soft animal sound that Young could not interpret, and Young clung to him and said on a long shattered breath, “Nick. _Nick_.”


	63. Chapter 63

They stayed like that for a long time, wrapped together on the floor of the gateroom, Rush’s breath coming fast and unsteady, Young’s hands solid and heavy on Rush’s back. Young was vaguely aware of Scott standing his team down and leaving to take command of the bridge. Probably Scott spoke to him about it. He didn’t really know. He couldn’t say anything. He couldn’t stand up. All he could do was sit there holding Rush.

After a while he whispered, “Nick, are you okay? Talk to me.”

Rush didn’t say anything, or even lift his head from Young’s shoulder.

“I do not think he is okay,” the AI said anxiously. “I am keeping him out of the CPU. His mind is—”

“I know,” Young said in a low voice.

“Interfacing with the CPU requires considerable processing power. I am unable to determine what his capacity is. He could do considerable damage if he panics while interfaced with the ship, which seems…” It paused. “Within the realm of possibility.”

“What, Nicholas Rush, panic? Surely not.” Young tried to smile.

But Rush didn’t react, and after a moment, his very faint smile faded.

“Nick,” he said again, raising his hand to the back of Rush’s head. “You in there, genius?”

Still nothing.

Young raised his eyes to Greer. “Has he been talking to you?”

Greer was watching Rush with a wary, protective look. “Yeah— more at the beginning. He, uh— he had a hard time with the shuttle crash. I guess he was sort of mixed up as to whether or not he was the shuttle. Then he was talking a lot to people who weren’t there, and he wasn’t sure _I_ was really there, but he was, you know, mostly making sense at that point. Things got a little bit rough after that.”

“You want to expand on that?” Young asked.

Greer looked like he’d rather lie down on the gateroom floor and take a twenty-four hour nap, but he drew a deep breath and said, “They sent short-range craft after us, so we had to go find a way off the planet. Rush plugged himself into a computer terminal and found us a gate, but we had to go through this creepy sewer system to get there, and they caught us on the way. Rush… did something that killed them, I guess, but he almost drowned. After that he pretty much stopped talking. But he’s with it, you know; he powered the gate. Like, he powered a wormhole. With his _brain_.”

Rush lifted his head just enough to give Greer a searching look.

“Hey,” Greer said. “Yeah, it’s me. Still haven’t gotten rid of me. Computer, give us an update us on your current state.”

“Cold,” Rush whispered. “Nonfunctional. Scared. Wet.”

Young drew him closer. “Why are you scared?” he asked. “You’re back on Destiny. Everything’s all right now.”

Rush didn’t say anything.

“You kind of have to give him commands,” Greer said. “It helps to talk to him like the Star Trek computer. He crashes like a computer, too, when he gets surprised or stressed.”

“He doesn’t have the processing power to handle rapid changes in his environment,” the AI said. “He’s managing too much data to fight his way out from under it.”

“You got a new nickname, huh?” Young said quietly to Rush, who had tucked his head back against Young’s shoulder. “Okay, computer, tell me why you’re scared.”

“ _Naturalis n’es_ ,” Rush whispered. “ _Welho quod naturalis eses, sed n’es. En cordi meod dolhom creat.”_

Young looked at the AI.

Its brow was furrowed. “He says he does not think that you are real.”

“Nick,” Young said, “I’m real. Look, I’m here. You can feel me. _Caledos_ , remember?”

Rush shook his head and made a small hurt sound against Young’s neck.

Greer shrugged. “I wouldn’t take it personally. For a while, he didn’t think I was real, either. It’s kind of a surprisingly hard thing to prove.”

“ _Naturales somos_ ,” the AI said, taking a careful step closer to Rush. “Nick, _naturales somos. En Fatod es. Ments towa ferita est.”_

Rush tightened his grip on Young and shook his head again.

Young sighed. “Let’s get you guys to the infirmary,” he said to Greer. “At the very least you can go through decon and get warmed up.”

But when he tried to carefully pull Rush to his feet, Rush wasn’t going for it. At first he refused to move, making himself into a dead weight, and then, when Young finally coaxed him into trying, he made it about halfway to standing before his body went limp.

“Whoa,” Young said, catching him before he could fold to the floor.

“Yup,” Greer said, sounding unsurprised. “He crashed. It’s no big deal. You just got to hang on for a minute, and he’ll kind of reboot. But he might not know where he is.”

Sure enough, in about a minute and a half, Rush went tense in Young’s arms, and struggled against him, looking panicked and confused.

“Nick,” Young said soothingly. “Nick, you’re fine. You’re on Destiny. Greer’s here, the AI’s here, I’m here— it’s all good.”

Rush looked from Greer to the AI to Young. “Greer,” he said, sounding frightened.

“Yeah, Doc,” Greer said, quickly stepping over to him. “What’s up?”

“Where are we?”

“He just told you,” Greer said gently. “You’re on Destiny. Remember? You charged the gate up while I walked the triangle thing around it? They locked us out the first two times, but fortunately on the third go they were nice enough to let us through.”

Rush looked like he wasn’t quite buying it.

“ _Weros est,_ ” the AI said quietly. “Nick _, ne time. Nehil te ferire ne sino. Numquam. Te semper protegeso. Ni bracchiom ni incentivos FTL es. Plu magnos om es. Me tenes?”_

Rush raised both his hands to his head and pressed them against his temples. “No,” he said unsteadily. “No; I don’t know; I don’t—“

“Hey, hey,” Young said, pulling Rush towards him. “Shh. You don’t have to figure it out right now.”

“No pressure,” Greer added in a deliberately casual voice. “We’re gonna go to the infirmary, get wrapped up in some blankets, probably hang out for a while eating snacks— not as good as a picnic, but still, I bet TJ’s been hoarding all the best stuff from Earth.”

Rush glared at him. “I’m not a _child!_ ” He pushed away from Young. “I know what you’re doing! You don't have to bribe me with _snacks!_ ”

“Fine,” Greer said, unruffled. “More snacks for me, then. You’re still gonna have to come to the infirmary for decon protocol, too, so you’ll be stuck there watching me eat _my_ snacks.”

Rush scowled at him, but something in Greer’s voice must have reassured him, because he let Young gently steer him out of the gateroom. 

As soon as they reached the hallway, though, he came to a halt. He pulled away from Young again, pressing his palms against the nearest bulkhead, then turning his head to it as though there were something he was trying to hear. He looked disturbed.

“It’s not alive,” he said, his breath coming fast. “It’s _not alive_. _Quor ne guios est?_ What did you do to it?”

“To the wall?” Young asked, confused.

The AI said quietly, “He cannot feel the ship.”

“It is _not_ the ship!” Rush pounded one hand against the bulkhead. “It’s not _alive_ ; it’s _not_ the ship!”

“It _is_ the ship, genius,” Young said, trying to keep his tone soothing. “You just can’t feel it right now. That’s all.”

“Nick,” the AI said, sounding agonized, “your mind is wounded. I cannot allow you access to the ship in such a condition.”

Rush shook his head vehemently. “ _Megei mentieso. Naturalis n’est._ ”

“It _is_ real.”

“No. No.” He spun, shoving Young out of his way. Then abruptly his knees buckled. Young caught him as he sank towards the floor.

“I got you,” Young murmured.

Rush’s eyes were blank. After a few seconds, he startled back to life with a gasp and immediately elbowed Young in the stomach while simultaneously kicking him in the shin.

“Ow,” Young said, wincing. “Thanks for that.”

“Everett?” Rush breathed, staring at him as though he hadn’t expected Young to be there.

“Yeah,” Young said. “Hey. You’re back with us.”

“Everett,” Rush said again, sounding less sure.

“Still me.”

Rush didn’t say anything. He stared at Young with a haunted expression. He reached out after a while and pressed a shaky hand to Young’s face, then the other hand, feeling Young’s features like a blind person might. Young stood very still and let him do it, though his hands were so cold that it was hard not to flinch. He wasn’t sure what Rush was searching for– whether there might be some invisible mark, something invisible to sight but committed to memory, something that would make sense only to him.

“It’s me,” Young whispered. “It really is me.”

Rush still didn’t say anything.

“Doc,” Greer said quietly. “This is all real. You’re on Destiny. We’re heading to the infirmary right now.”

Rush leaned forward and rested his head against Young’s shoulder listlessly. He let Young turn him around and shepherd him towards the infirmary.

But he didn’t speak again the whole way there.

* * *

Rush crashed three times during the decon protocol— a process that he didn’t really seem to understand— and finally woke up clean, dry, and dressed in his √-1 ♡ Math t-shirt, which he stared down at for about a minute and a half before he noticed that Young was sitting next to him on the gurney. Then the same of expression of— Young didn’t know, melancholy, or far-away sadness, or something— came over his face.

“Hey,” Young said quietly. “You want me to go?”

Rush’s hand snaked out from under the blankets covering him and locked onto Young’s wrist.

“You don’t want me to go.”

Rush didn’t say anything.

“What’s with the face? Are you just mad about the t-shirt? I think it’s a good look for you.”

No response.

“What, you’re not talking to me? _En Alteriumom?”_

Rush turned his head away, but didn’t let go of Young’s wrist.

“ _Ne quor?_ ” Young asked softly.

“ _Naturalis n’es_ ,” Rush said, so soundlessly that Young almost couldn’t hear it.

“I don’t know about that. I feel pretty real.”

“I knew you weren’t. I figured it out. It never made any sense.”

“What never made any sense, Nick?”

“It’s not even a good likeness.” Rush’s voice cracked. “I’m not going to tell you anything.”

“I’m not _asking_ you anything,” Young said, frustrated.

The AI flickered into existence, sitting on the edge of the opposite gurney. “Nick,” it said, “do you think we are Nakai illusions?”

“Obviously you are,” Rush whispered. He shut his eyes. “Obviously I’m being tortured.”

“Hey, no!” Young said, startled. “Nick. Why would you think that?”

“You’re here, but you’re _not here_ ,” Rush said wretchedly. He pulled Young’s hand up and pressed it against his head. “You’re _not here_ , and Destiny is _dead_. I knew _all along_ that this was their plan. That they’d pretend to give me something and take it away. But it _didn’t work_. I _don’t care_. I don’t care about _either_ of you.”

Young looked at the AI helplessly.

“Nick, I cannot let you into the ship,” the AI said, sounding miserable. “Your mind is too injured. You are having difficulty understanding what is real and not-real. And Colonel Young—“

“I’ll take down my block,” Young said.

“No!” The AI staticked in distress. “If he does not believe you are real, he could destroy your mind, just as he did to the Nakai. I do not think you would be able to prevent him from doing so.”

Young looked down at Rush, who was breathing fast, his face twisted in some kind of inner torment. He was holding on very tightly to Young’s wrist. Young shifted his hand slightly to stroke Rush’s hair back. Rush flinched, but still didn’t let go.

“What are we going to do?” Young asked. He didn’t know if he was talking to the AI or Rush.

“I don’t know,” the AI whispered. “I cannot allow him to put the ship at risk.”

For a moment they sat in a silence broken only by the shudder of Rush’s breath.

“We might as well go home,” Young said quietly. “Right? I mean, at least maybe that’s…” He didn’t know what to say. “Better. More familiar.”

The AI nodded unhappily.

“Nick,” Young said, “do you want to go home?”

“I don’t care,” Rush said. He had escalated to a point very near hyperventilation; his fingertips were digging bruises into Young’s wrist. “I _don’t care._ ”

“Okay, well—“ Young considered carefully. His eyes wandered over to where Greer was deeply unconscious, having crashed shortly after eating half his weight in granola bars. “ _I’m_ going home. I’m pretty tired. It’s been a tough day. I’ll probably just go to bed. You’re welcome to come. I know that helps you warm up sometimes.”

Rush wouldn’t look at him.

After a while, Young turned as though to go, and Rush let himself be pulled off the gurney, as though Young were the one holding _his_ wrist, and not vice versa; as though he had no choice in the matter.

Young allowed himself to feel a very, very slight surge of triumph.

“Okay,” he said, “but if you want to come with me, you’re going to have to put on your boots.”

* * *

The walk home pretty much wore Rush out. Young wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing; Rush kept resolutely clinging to him, but he didn’t lose his air of tense and nervous sadness, nor did he say much, beyond a few terse words. He didn’t seem fazed by the way the AI appeared and disappeared as they made their way through the halls, but he also didn’t seem to notice when it disappeared for good as they entered their quarters, so maybe he was just indifferent to it.

“Can I have my hand back?” Young asked mildly once they were inside. “I just want to take my jacket off. Maybe you can decide whether you want to sit on the couch for a while or get in bed. The bed’ll be warmer, but I’m not sure, uh, how much touching you’re up to at the moment. Although you’ve been pretty touch-y, actually. Well, you’re always _touchy_ , but usually not _this_ kind of touchy.”

Rush looked uncertainly at his hand on Young’s wrist. Very slowly, he unclenched his fingers. “Bed,” he whispered.

“Sure,” Young said. “Bed it is.”

He went ahead and stripped off his uniform. Rush didn’t; he watched Young for a minute, warily, then took his boots off with clumsy, shivering hands before climbing into bed fully dressed. Young joined him, lying at a careful distance from Rush until Rush edged across the inches that separated them and curled around him, pressing his face into Young’s chest.

“Warmer?” Young murmured.

Rush nodded.

“Good.” He pulled the blankets up over them, and let his hand rest on Rush’s back. “We can just hang out here for a while. You can go to sleep if you want. I would say we should both sleep, and just hang out _there_ , but I feel like maybe that’s not going to work very well if you’re still not sure I’m real. I don’t want you accidentally blowing up my cabin. The property values in that area— I mean, you would not _believe_.”

He felt a very slight twitch where he thought that maybe Rush had almost smiled.

“So maybe we’ll just hang out. And talk. Or I can talk, I guess. I can give you an update. Even though not much has happened since you went away— you know, the usual: pissing TJ off by passing out and then refusing to stay in the infirmary; barely managing not to punch Telford— the AI let him out, but Scott assures me he's locked back up now.”

He paused, because Rush had tensed at that.

“But maybe I should stick to lighter-weight stuff,” he said at length. “Uh— let me think what counts as lighter-weight."

He was silent for a moment, absently smoothing his hand over Rush’s back. He couldn't think of anything in his recent life that didn't seem upsetting.

“You know the SGC sent a flashdrive full of personal letters through the gate," he said after a while. "With T— with the research team? Like, letters from our families that they’d scanned."

His eyes drifted towards his datapad, resting on the nightstand.

"A bunch from my family. I haven’t looked at any of them yet. I don’t know why. Or maybe I know why, I guess. My family’s really— they’re nice people. Really nice people. My mom and dad still live in Buffalo, and I’ve got two brothers in Denver, and another one in Cheyenne, and they’re— my brothers, they’re all married with kids. I always said there was no way I could raise kids with my job, which is true, but also— maybe also not true.”

He fell silent again. This hadn't ended up being lighter-weight. 

It took him a long time to find what he wanted to say.

“I can’t imagine taking you back there,” he said finally. “I mean, I know that’s not going to— but even if it could. I still can’t. And you’re—“ He swallowed. “The most important, obviously. And if I can’t imagine _you_ there, if _you_ don’t fit in that house, then— who the hell are they even writing letters to? You know what I mean? Not me. It’d be like opening someone else’s mail. Or— not like that. Like trying to stuff myself into someone else’s skin. Not the way _we_ do it, but— you know what I’m talking about.”

“No,” Rush murmured. “I do not know what you are talking about.”

Young rolled his eyes. “You always say that.”

There was a pause.

“I am the most important,” Rush echoed.

“Of course that’s the part you’d pick up on.” Young smiled faintly. “Yeah, of course you are. Like anyone else could even…”

He couldn’t think of what to say.

“When you were gone,” he said, “the AI said—“ His throat closed without warning, and he swallowed. “We were both, uh, having a rough time. A very rough time without you there. And it said you were the one thing that couldn’t be replaced. Not like an FTL drive, or— whatever. Any other spare part.”

Rush said absently, “I can be replaced. A subroutine exists.”

“No, Nick; you’re not listening. You can’t. _You_ can’t. Not for me, either. And not just because we’re joined at the head. So— yeah, you’re the most important, you idiot. You always will be.”

“ _Neli me idiota nomenare_ ,” Rush mumbled, frowning.

“I’ll call you an idiot when you’re being an idiot.”

“No _._ ”

“Yes, I will.”

“No.”

“Speaking of us being joined at the head—“ Young tapped Rush’s forehead with a finger. “You seem like you’re feeling a little better. You want to try giving this a go? I take down my block, and you don’t try to kill me?”

Rush didn’t say anything. He clenched a fist in the fabric of Young’s shirt.

“I think it might help,” Young said. “Plus, if we’re clear on who everybody is and how real everybody is, then we can go to sleep, and I can pull you into my dream, and I think we could both use a vacation from all this, so…”

Rush shifted restlessly. He still didn’t say anything.

The AI, projecting as Jackson, briefly materialized at the end of the bed. “Try phrasing your question as an if-then statement,” it suggested. “It will be clearer.”

“Can you stay out of our bedroom?” Young hissed at it.

“I _am_ your bedroom,” it said, frowning. “In a manner of speaking.”

“Please don’t say that.”

Rush lifted his head a little. “What—“ he said, looking bemused.

“Nothing,” Young said. “The AI is implying it watches us when we’re— you know.”

“I do not,” the AI said. “Nick has informed me that it is inappropriate. Hello, Nick.”

“You’re _confusing_ him,” Young said, annoyed.

“I am monitoring his condition. I am concerned you will upset him.”

“Go away. Don’t spy on us in bed.”

“It is not inappropriate to watch people in bed. Only when they are sleeping or engaged in—“

“Oh, my God,” Young said, letting his head drop back against the pillow. “Yes, it is. It is very inappropriate.”

Rush was watching them with an expression of befuddlement. But at least he didn’t seem particularly scared.

“This is what I’ve had to deal with the whole time you’ve been gone, by the way,” Young told him. “It’s like being followed around by a very talkative toddler with a God complex.”

“I am not a toddler,” the AI said petulantly. “Nick, tell him I am not a toddler.”

“It is not a toddler,” Rush said.

They both looked at him.

“Hey,” Young said gently, stroking his hair back. “I wasn’t sure how much you were really following all of that.”

Rush shrugged and pushed his face back into Young’s chest.

Young looked up at the AI.

“If-then statement,” it whispered.

“Only if you _leave_ ,” Young whispered back at it fiercely. He turned to Rush. “Since it’s impossible to get any privacy around here, what do you say? If I take down my block, you’ll let me into your head?”

“If I let you,” Rush mumbled, “then you will let me into your dream?”

“Right. Exactly.”

Rush made a thoughtful sound. “True,” he said eventually, still sounding a little anxious. “A true statement.”

“Okay,” Young said.

He pictured the point in his mind at which he’d drawn the block. It looked, as his blocks usually looked, like floorboards to him. He carefully pried up one of the floorboards, and peered down into the darkness. //Hello?// he tried, projecting waves of calm and reassurance.

Rush flinched. Young felt it in his mind, like a burst of pain from very far away. He had a dim sense of the tumult he’d sensed in the gate room, quietened down to a less overwhelming shriek.

//I’m here,// he said. //Come find me. I’m here; it’s really me.//

Rush’s thoughts came pushing up against the crack in the floorboards, like a small and very densely seething mass of something living, sparking electric-green, spiky with confusion and desolation and pain. Young could see the moment when Rush recognized him— an all-over lighting-up swell like bioluminescence sweeping through a dark ocean, lighting up every part of Rush’s brain, and a sort of latching-on feeling as Rush shoved himself against the edge of Young’s consciousness with a starved, possessive, desperate sort of need that reminded Young of the way Rush clung to his body.

“Yeah,” Young said softly, with a faint smile. “Hi. There you are.”

“Hello,” Rush whispered, blinking at him.

“That’s better, right?”

“I—“ Rush pressed the heel of one hand to his forehead. “I don’t—“

“I know everything’s a little bit confusing right now.”

“You’re _blocking_. You’re both _blocking,”_ Rush said, hurt and perplexed and still afraid. “Why would you _do_ that?”

“Because,” Young said quietly. “You've been having a really hard time, and we didn't want you to hurt us.”

“I wouldn’t. I would _never—_ ”

“I know. But you didn’t know we were real. We’re going to take down the blocks, okay? But we don’t want to confuse you.”

The AI flickered into being again, this time sitting at the side of the bed. “Nick, I am going to allow you access to a small portion of the CPU. I have put two percent of it behind a firewall for you. Is this acceptable?”

After a moment, Rush nodded hesitantly.

Through the space in the floorboards, Young could feel something like a roar of raw energy, given tangible form and force, charging into Rush’s thoughts and spreading them wider, wider, stretching them out until—

The whole spiny web of filaments collapsed.

Rush went limp, his eyes unfocused.

“Nick,” Young said, shaking him gently. “ _Nick._ ”

Nothing. Rush had crashed again.

Young turned an accusing eye on the AI. “I thought this was supposed to _help_ him!”

“It _is_ helping,” the AI retorted. “Or, rather, it _will_ help. However, his mind is extremely damaged. I suspect he cannot adjust to the additional capacity without re-bootstrapping what remains of it.”

“What remains of it,” Young repeated in a low voice. He brushed Rush’s hair back from his forehead, staring down at him.

“He will be all right,” the AI said, sounding unsure. “He is talented at being all right.”

“Yeah,” Young said. “Yeah, probably.”

He didn’t think Rush was talented at being all right. He thought Rush was a talented liar, much more so than Young had given him credit for, but that he put so much effort into maintaining the central lie of his all-right-ness that he had nothing left for the smaller lies he tried to sell. The AI almost certainly knew this too, but was once again trying to make the world conform to its expectations, as though the language it spoke was like code, and it could write Rush into being all right.

Rush jerked against Young, struggling against him in panic, and sucked in a long gasp of air.

“Easy,” Young said, holding him steady. “Easy. You just crashed. You’re home. You’re safe.”

“I know,” Rush murmured, relaxing.

“Yeah? You remember what happened?”

“AI. CPU.”

“Right. The AI let you back on the CPU. Is that okay? Is that helping?”

But he could already tell it was helping. The painfully dense knot of Rush’s thoughts had spread, wavering and unsure, like a cramped muscle relaxing. Not much. Just a little bit. It was all still chaos— noisy and confused and sparking at random, riddled with misfiring neurons and ideas breaking down in disarray. But it was fractionally less agonized where it pushed itself against the boundary between their minds.

“ _Ne scio_ ,” Rush whispered. “Hurts.”

“I know it does. Sorry.”

Young pulled up another of the floorboards between them, exposing himself to the ferocious ache of that disordered thinking. He ignored the way the pain leaked into his own head. He had the same impulse as Rush, to cram their minds together, greedy for apposition, frantic to see and hear and feel and touch every part of themselves that had been ripped from him. His mind was like a wound that _wanted_ to close, skin hungry to meet its other half. But he had a feeling Rush wasn’t going to react well to any sudden changes.

“Come on,” he said, rubbing his hand down Rush’s back. “Let’s go to sleep. If we go to sleep, then you’ll let me pull you into my dream. Right?”

“Yes,” Rush said indistinctly. “True.”

“And the AI’ll get out of here for a while, because it knows how creepy hanging out in our bedroom is?” Young directed a pointed stare at it.

“I am not creepy,” the AI said, sounding offended. “Nick, I am not creepy. I wish you to be comfortable. I am running maximal social behavior algorithms so that you will feel at ease.”

“I know you are, sweetheart,” Rush murmured. “Just give us a few hours.”

The AI frowned at Young. “I will wake you when he is sufficiently adapted to cope with additional capacity,” it said, and vanished.

Young sighed, and pressed his face to the top of Rush’s head. “You know, somehow you’ve managed to teach that thing all of your worst habits, and none of your best ones.”

“I have no bad habits,” Rush said drowsily.

“It has become…” Young paused for effect. “A _lot of work_.”

“No. _Ego hoc ’som._ ”

“Oh, you’re jealous of your title?” Young grinned, shifting to wrap both arms around Rush. “Don’t worry. You’ll always be the _most_ work.”

“Yes,” Rush said, sounding satisfied.

“You’re lucky I’m a hard worker.”

Rush tilted his head and looked at Young with a weak hint of a smirk. “Hard worker,” he said.

“Shut up. Twenty minutes ago you weren’t sure I was real, and now you’re making innuendoes? Unbelievable.”

Rush’s smirk grew, then abruptly collapsed. He drew a fast, shaky breath and looked away, trying to control his expression. "I missed you, you know," he whispered.

Young swallowed. "I know," he said with difficulty. "I missed you, too."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Naturalis n’es... Welho quod naturalis eses, sed n’es. En cordi meod dolhom creat._ = You're not real. I wish you were real, but you're not. It makes my heart hurt.
> 
>  _Naturales somos. En Fatod es. Ments towa ferita est._ = We're real. You're on Destiny. Your mind is injured.
> 
>  _“Weros est... Nick, ne time. Nehil te ferire ne sino. Numquam. Te semper protegeso. Ni bracchiom ni incentivos FTL es. Plu magnos om es. Me tenes?”_ = It's true. Nick, don't be afraid. I won't let anything hurt you. Ever. I'll always protect you. You're not an arm or an FTL drive. You're the most important thing. Do you understand me?
> 
>  _Quor ne guios est?_ = Why isn't it alive?
> 
>  _Megei mentieso. Naturalis n’est._ = You're lying to me. It's not real.
> 
>  _Neli me idiota nomenare._ = Don't call me an idiot.
> 
>  _Ego hoc 'som._ = I am this.


	64. Chapter 64

_For some reason Young is standing in the kitchen, looking at a bowl full of marbles. He doesn’t know where they came from, which he guesses means he knows where they came from, because things keep turning up in the cabin, and they all come from Rush. There’s an office upstairs now with a chalkboard in it, and heaps of paper, and stacks of math journals all over the floor. The bowl of marbles, at least, is small and very tasteful. It looks like something someone would buy from a high-end home store. Young frowns at it, because he can’t imagine Rush in a high-end home store._

_The phone rings. It’s an old plastic phone, the kind with big square push-buttons. Young blinks and picks it up._

_“Hello?” he says uncertainly._

_But though he waits for an answer, he hears nothing but static. Then another phone starts ringing, which confuses him, and he tries to answer that, and he’s holding two phones, and his radio crackles, and he doesn’t know why he’s wearing his Destiny radio, and he’s really stressed out by the time it occurs to him that Rush is trying to reach him, and that Rush can’t tell him so because Rush can’t talk._

_He’s not really sure what to do. He goes out on the porch and looks out through what seems like static, but might also be thick flurries of snow.He can see someone in the distance, a small dark speck, so he sets out towards them. The static-snow is prickly against his skin and strange, not cold so much as a negation of being, and it makes him uncomfortable, so he starts turning it into real snow, thick dry powder that collects into crisp, satisfying drifts. Mountains form up around him, dark with trees and dropping to desert in the distance, and the air takes on a clean piñon scent, and pretty soon he’s wearing a blue-and-red ski jacket and a hat with flannel-lined flaps._

_When Young reaches him, Rush— because of course it’s Rush— is huddled miserably in the midst of a broad, featureless stretch of snow. Young supposes the snow is really static, but the closer he gets to Rush, the more it turns into snow: snow collecting on Rush’s t-shirt-clad shoulders, covering his bare feet, dusting the undersides of his arms where he’s folded them over his head._

_“What happened?” Young asks, already stripping his jacket off. “Did you get lost?”_

_Rush blinks up at him, looking confused, and nods hesitantly._

_“I guess that makes sense,” Young says. “We’re still all disconnected.” He tosses the jacket at Rush. It lands completely covering his head, making him look like a sad little red-and-blue boulder. “Put that on, why don’t you. You’re going to catch your death.”_

_Rush fumbles the jacket on, taking a moment to pluck the nylon shell between two fingers with an eloquent expression of disdain._

_Young rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. I’m not the one who tried to climb a snow-capped mountain barefoot.”_

_Rush makes a complicated gesture that seems to suggest the mountain was not a mountain until Young got there._

_“Don’t give me that. You always show up unprepared.”_

_Rush points at Young._

_“I’m not a tool kit!” Young says, indignant. “It’s not like you packed me in case you got into trouble!”_

_Rush shrugs unrepentantly. He climbs to his feet and stands there unsteadily, looking around like he’s not really sure where he is._

_“Come on,” Young says. “Let me see if I can find us a shortcut. You can’t walk up the slope without shoes on. What is it with you and shoes, anyway?”_

_He grabs ahold of Rush’s icy hand, lacing their fingers together tightly, and shuts his eyes, focusing on the porch._

_Then they’re on the porch. Rush seems a little discombobulated, and Young looks at him anxiously. “You’re not going to crash, are you?” he asks._

_Rush looks confused again. He touches his head with both hands._

_“You know, crash,” Young says. But he doesn’t really know what he means by that. Or does he? He frowns. “You’re having a hard time. In your head. That’s why you can’t talk.”_

_Rush nods, apparently satisfied by this explanation, and pushes the door open._

_Inside, he sheds Young’s jacket and drops it on the floor in favor of wrapping a blanket around his shoulders. He wanders around the living room, squinting at various objects and running his hands over them: the lamps, the mantle, the leather couch, the coffee table, the wooden lintel around the doorway. It’s like he’s inspecting them for flaws of some kind._

_“It’s all real,” Young says, watching him. “If that’s what you’re wondering. I mean, I guess it’s not real, because it’s a dream, but— whatever. It keeps changing, though, you know. You’ve got an office upstairs now. It’s a mess. There’s a chalkboard with your horrible handwriting all over it.”_

_Rush scowls at him._

_“You do have horrible handwriting. You cannot have failed to notice this.” Young picks up the discarded jacket and drapes it over the couch. “So what’s up? You want to hang out on the couch? Play the piano?”_

_That second suggestion makes Rush go tense, and he looks away, hunching his shoulders._

_“—You’re not sure you know how to play the piano,” Young realizes. “That’s okay. Like I said. You’re having a hard time right now. It’ll come back to you. We can just hang out on the couch.”_

_A couple of Rush’s math journals have found their way to the coffee table, so Young picks one of them up and folds comfortably onto the couch, sliding his reading glasses onto his nose. But Rush frowns at him and takes the journal out of his hands, presenting him with a copy of War in History instead._

_“Really?” Young says._

_Rush nods emphatically, and taps Young’s forehead with a finger._

_“Stop that,” Young says, swatting at him. “I get it. My mind; your mind. Two different places.”_

_Rush keeps the math journal for himself and settles lengthwise on the couch with his head in Young’s lap. Young doesn’t comment; he lets one of his hands rest absently in Rush’s hair, and for a long time they read like that, the silence broken only by the crackle of the fire, logs occasionally snapping, or one of the two of them turning a page. It’s… restful. Young reads about chemical warfare at Gallipoli, and Rush reads something with a lot of diagrams in it that seems to be about quantum key distribution._

_After a while, Young glances down to find that Rush has put down his journal and is watching him with an unreadable expression— something unguarded, soft, complicated, and slightly lost._

_“Hey,” Young says gently. “What?”_

_Rush shakes his head, but he doesn’t look away. A moment passes, and he sits up, carefully straddling Young’s lap. He cradles Young’s face in his hands, tracing all its features with a kind of tender curiosity, like he’d done in the hallway, when he hadn’t been sure Young was real, but— not like that. There’s no hint of uncertainty in what he’s doing. It’s more like exploration, or memorization, maybe._

_“You see me every day,” Young whispers, smiling faintly. “You don’t need to memorize my face.”_

_Rush shakes his head, still wearing that soft, lost look._

_“What?” Young says again._

_Rush makes a gesture._

_“I don’t understand.”_

_Rush climbs off of him and grabs his wrist, yanking at him insistently until Young says, “All right, all right, I’m coming,” and follows him into the music room, where Rush goes to the piano and taps the A5 key._

_“We’re playing this game again?” Young asks dubiously. “I don’t think I was that good at it last time.”_

_Rush hits A5 again and looks at Young expectantly._

_“It’s a question,” Young hazards._

_Rush nods._

_“A one-word question?”_

_Rush nods._

_“You better not have forgotten who I am.”_

_Rush gives him an exasperated look._

_“Well, if it’s not who, and when doesn’t make sense, and you know where you are, and there really isn’t a what— why?”_

_Rush nods._

_“Why what?”_

_Rush gestures to him._

_Young doesn’t understand. “Why me?”_

_Rush clicks his tongue in frustration. He takes Young’s hand and draws it forward to himself, holding it against his chest._

_“Oh,” Young says. “Why you. Why— me and you?”_

_Rush just looks at him._

_“I don’t know how I’m supposed to answer that,” Young says helplessly._

_Rush reaches out and hits the piano key again._

_“I’m not good with words like you are. I don’t know how to explain.”_

_Rush keeps hitting the A5 key stubbornly: Why? Why? Why?_

_Young says—_

“Everett,” Jackson’s voice said quietly.

Young made a rough, groggy noise and tried to swat him— it— Jackson— the AI— thing away before he remembered that he couldn’t touch it.

“Everett. I am going to allow him an additional two percent of the CPU now.”

Young buried his face in the pillow. “I needed five more minutes,” he whispered.

“No,” it said, sounded puzzled. “You did not. My timing is very exact. I have planned step-wise increases in capacity over the next sixteen hours.”

“Never mind.” Young sighed.

“He will need you to be awake. It is likely that he will be confused when he crashes and reboots.”

“I got him. Go ahead and do your thing.”

In sleep, Rush had shifted until he was lying half on top of Young, his left hand inexplicably shoved up Young’s right shirt sleeve, as though he’d been trying to climb inside Young’s clothing. Young let him stay like that, and wrapped both arms across his back, so that when—

Rush twitched as he crashed, his mind flying apart into its own darkness. A minute or so later, he jerked again, harder, and flailed a hand clumsily at Young.

“Shh,” Young murmured. “It’s okay. You crashed. You’re still here.”

“Everett?” Rush said shakily.

“Yeah. Still me.”

Young pried up two more of the floorboards that separated them, wincing as his headache increased, and sent a wave of calm through to Rush’s tenuous, volatile, makeshift consciousness. //See? Here I am.//

“Oh,” Rush whispered, relaxing. “I dreamt—“

“I know. The AI woke me up.”

“That was real?”

“Of course it was real. Well, a real dream.”

“I need to— I want to—“ Rush’s thoughts shoved restlessly against Young’s mind, anxious and unhappy about the floorboard-block between them. “Why are you— You’re _blocking_ me.”

“It’s just for right now. Remember? The AI and I are trying to fix your mind.”

“Oh,” Rush said again, blurrily. “Everett?”

“Still me.”

“Was that you in the dream?”

“Yeah. It was me,” Young said gently.

“I was waiting for you to say something. I was. Wasn’t I?”

“Yeah. You were.”

“What was I waiting for you to say?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Young murmured. He brought a hand up to cradle the back of Rush’s head.

* * *

_Young trudges through the thick snow on the mountain, carrying a thermos full of coffee and an extra down coat._

_“You know, I’m not a damn St. Bernard,” he says to Rush when he reaches him._

_Rush makes a dismissive gesture and grabs the thermos, his face going pleased when he unscrews the cap._

_“Yeah. Coffee,” Young says. “Because you’re_ freezing.  _You still couldn’t get there?”_

_Rush indicates the blank expanse of snow around them, his expression darkening in frustration._

_“Well, I’m sure it’ll get better.” Young pries the thermos out of Rush’s unwilling hands, slapping at Rush when he tries to steal it back. “No; put your coat on and then you can have it. Honestly, for all the grief you give people about treating you like a child, you—”_

_Rush scowls at Young, balling the coat up and hurling into a snowdrift._

_“Okay,” Young says, “well, that wasn’t very gracious. But I get it. You’re upset.”_

_Rush makes an over-sized gesture eloquently communicating that, no shit, he’s upset. He points around him and then at himself, and then at Young, and moves his hand between them, and eventually Young sort of gets the gist._

_“You want to know why you can’t find me,” he says._

_Rush nods emphatically, kicking savagely at another snowdrift._

_“I think maybe our brains got scrambled a little somehow?”_

_Rush points a severe finger at Young’s head and makes an expression that suggests he thinks it’s_ Young’s _brain that’s scrambled._

 _“Excuse me;_ I’m _the one who’s been trekking through the snow to find_ you! _I could’ve stayed in my nice warm cabin, drinking coffee and listening to your bad records!”_

_Rush looks away and his shoulders go stiff._

_Young sighs. “But that’s not the point. The whole point is that_ you’re _there. So just be a little bit patient, will you? And try to dream yourself up some shoes.”_

_Rush looks down at his bare feet and shrugs._

_“Well,_ I _care.” Young bends down and picks up the discarded coat, then takes off his own snow boots and hands them to Rush. “Here. Put these on.” For good measure, he pulls off his hat and jams it down over Rush’s head. It’s orange-and-green striped, with a knitted pom-pom. “Perfect. Now you’re ready to go.”_

_Rush frowns at him, wrinkling his nose like he suspects his dignity is being violated, and stalks away from Young through the snow, oversized boots thwapping, pom-pom bouncing, and ski jacket declaring him a member of the University of Wyoming Snowboarding Club._

_Young rolls his eyes. “Hang on,” he says. “You’re going the wrong direction.”_

_Rush folds his arms haughtily and waits for Young to catch up._

* * *

“Everett,” the AI said, and Young sighed and tried to turn away from it, prompting an aggravated, sleepy sound from Rush.

“Everett,” the AI said again. “it is time for another two percent.”

“Yeah,” Young said, still not really awake and grimacing against his headache. Or Rush’s headache. Or their shared headache. “Sure.”

Rush flinched, and his mind went flat. A minute later it spun up again like an FTL drive, bright-hot and agitated, slightly less cramped than before, and jumpy with over-anxious life. It still wanted inside Young’s part of the landscape they shared. It pressed inquisitively up at the floorboard-cracks, humming and crackling at Young through the holes he’d made in the barrier. When Young had finished prying up another few boards, he found himself sort of _petting_ it, trying to calm its frantic tangles and flares.

“Mm,” Rush said drowsily, sounding dissatisfied. “Why are you _blocking?”_

“Because,” Young said wearily. “You hurt your mind. Remember? It’s just for a little bit.”

“I hurt my mind?”

“Yeah.”

“When?”

“Yesterday. It’s okay. You’re getting better.” Young smoothed a steady hand over his back.

“Everett,” Rush said hazily after a moment.

“What?”

“Where am I?”

“You’re on Destiny.”

“No,” Rush said, sounding troubled. “Destiny does not feel like this.”

“I promise,” Young said softly. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes.” Rush pushed his face against Young’s neck. “Yes, of course.”

Young looked at him. Rush’s brow was furrowed, but he was already mostly asleep again, unconscious of anything that might be surprising about his answer. “Good,” Young whispered eventually. “That’s good.”

Rush made an indistinct sound.

Young stroked his hair back. “Just sleep,” he murmured. “I’ll be there soon.”

He glanced up to find the AI watching him with an unreadable expression. It flickered between Jackson and Sheppard for a moment, settling on Sheppard at last. “Sleep,” it said quietly, echoing Young’s own tone. “It will help your headache. I will wake you when it is time again.”

* * *

_Rush is waist-deep in snow, wearing a t-shirt and shivering piteously—_

* * *

_Rush is wandering through an enormous pine forest, looking more and more frightened, his breath coming much too fast—_

* * *

_About ten feet from the cabin, Young realizes that he can’t turn the static into snow. It’s starting to change color, becoming speckled and grayish, and then a storm seems to come up out of the dark, except that it’s not a storm— it’s something else that seethes and crackles and is_ too much _and its too muchness is_ too much noise _and he has to set his teeth and plow through it, although his head is splitting, and its shriek grows louder and louder, and it’s like sandpaper against his skin, and eventually it starts to coalesce into confusing fragments: a shuttle moaning and panting like a wounded animal and Telford smiling with a mouth that has too many teeth in it, and Chloe dressed like the AI’s daughter, holding up her hands to show the sucking palms of the Wraith, and caves and closets and the kitchen in Glasgow and then a dark vault full of broken things, ships and weapons and shuttles and unidentifiable pieces, and water leaking slowly but steadily across the floor, and Rush is huddled next to a mostly-stripped Lantean puddlejumper, rocking almost imperceptibly back and forth with his hands over his head._

_“Hey,” Young says gently as he approaches. “What are you doing?”_

_Rush jolts and looks up at him._

_“Did you get lost?”_

_Rush stares at him like he doesn’t understand._

_“This is a dream," Young says."You're dreaming. I was trying to pull you into_ my _dream, but for some reason you keep getting lost.”_

_“Sorry, Doc,” Greer’s voice says from behind Young. “I hate to leave you here, but you’re pretty much busted. There’s no point taking you back to Destiny. The ship’s not going to want you now.”_

_Rush flinches and curls into himself more tightly._

_“That’s not true,” Young says quietly. “Greer would_ never _say that. He would never leave you_ anywhere _. And Destiny wouldn’t either.”_

_Rush shakes his head, looking anguished._

_“Trust me,” Young said. “It’s not going to happen. Come on. Let’s get you out of here.”_

_He holds out his hand. Rush looks at it for a second like he doesn’t know what to do with it, and then he lets Young pull him up and—_

* * *

“I don’t _understand_ ,” Rush said, breathing hard, his eyes wide and panicked. “Why are you _blocking?_ ”

Young held up his hands unthreateningly. “Nick, you hurt your mind, and the AI and I are trying to help you.”

“No. No.” Rush was sitting up in bed, his hands clenched in his hair. “Something’s _wrong_. This is _wrong_. This is _not happening._ ”

“You’re safe. You’re on Destiny. Everything’s fine.”

“Nick,” the AI said anxiously, “he is telling the truth. _En Fatod es. Epnia duena sent. Epnia. Disferens sentet quia ments towa ferita est.”_

“No. You’re lying.” Rush’s hands were shaking. Or he was shivering.

//Nick,// Young said, trying to project calm. //Look at my mind. You know it’s me. You know what I feel like. You trust me, remember?//

Rush stared at him uncertainly. Young could feel the disjointed bits of him crammed against the unblocked place between their minds, roiling with a brittle, terrified force. Young brought himself closer to them, wincing as his headache ratcheted up in response. He reached out to gingerly stroke at them, pushing the mental equivalent of his hand through the floorboards and getting a sense of Rush latching onto it, absorbing it, turning it round and round, inspecting it for signs of not being Young before he conceded that it _was_ Young, lighting up all over with recognition and arching up under Young’s touch.

“See?” Young said softly.

“Everett,” Rush whispered.

“Yeah. Still me.”

“You didn’t— you didn’t _feel_ right.”

“I know. You’re having a really tough time right now. But it’s getting better. I promise.”

Rush curled into a tight knot on the bed, bring his arms up over his head and making a miserable sound. “I don’t _understand._ ”

“I know,” Young said. “That’s okay. You don’t have to understand.” He laid a tentative hand on Rush’s back, then, when Rush didn’t object, lay down beside him and pulled Rush against his chest. “Just go to sleep. Everything’s fine. The AI and I are taking care of you.”

Rush didn’t say anything, but his breathing gradually slowed and Young could nudge him gently into slumber.

Young shut his eyes.

After a moment, he lifted his head and met the AI’s exhausted gaze.

They looked at each other for a long time.

“I will—” the AI began at last.

“Yeah.”

“When it’s—“

“I know,” Young said.

* * *

_The snow turns into marbles as he gets further from the cabin, pelting down like hailstones out of a stormy sky, and when he reaches Rush, Rush is crawling around the streets of an abandoned industrial city, trying desperately to gather the marbles up._

_"Seriously?" Young asks, wincing as a marble bounces off his shoulder, and then again when another one hits him on the head. "You couldn't have dreamed up something a little less, uh, on-the-nose?"_

_Rush stares at him, uncomprehending._

_Young sighs. "Never mind."_

* * *

_“It’s a_ ski _cabin,” Young says despairingly, “in the mountains. It’s a ski cabin in the_ mountains, _in the middle of_ winter. _Why are you never wearing_ shoes? _”_

* * *

_Young wades through the knee-high water, the beam of his flashlight bobbing over the surface._

_"Nick?" he calls. His voice echoes through the tunnel. "Nick?"_

_There are things moving under the water, and he doesn't know what they are. Sometimes they seem alive and sometimes they don't. He tries to ignore them, even though they make the hair on the back of his neck stand up._

_"Nick," he says, when he finally finds Rush. Rush is huddled on a narrow platform, just above the level of the water. "There you are. Let's get out of here."_

_Rush shakes his head jerkily, pointing at the water._

_"You don't have to go back in the water. Just take my hand."_

_Rush shakes his head again, looking like he doesn't believe him._

_"Really. I promise," Young says. "You don't have to go back in the water."_

_Rush looks at him, a question printed on his face._

_"Because I know a better way out of here," Young says._

* * *

 “Hey,” Young murmured as Rush blinked up at him. “That’s an improvement. You usually try to hit me when you reboot.”

“When I what?” Rush asked vaguely.

“When you crash and reboot. You hurt your mind, and the AI and I are—“

“Yes, yes. I remember.”

“Oh,” Young said, exhausted by the force of his own relief. “Do you? Good.”

“Why would I _hit_ you?”

“It’s just sort of your default reaction. Well, trying to escape is, I guess.”

“My default reaction to you?”

“ _No_ ,” Young said, flicking him on the head. “To rebooting. I think you think you’re being held down.”

“ _Am_ I being held down?”

“No. You’re being _held_ , so you don’t hurt yourself when you wake up in a panic. But I’m not sure you know what the difference is.”

“I do know what the difference is,” Rush said, frowning.

“So you just want to hit me, then.”

Rush shrugged with a weak, crooked half-smile.

“I knew it,” Young said, burying his face in Rush’s shoulder. “ _And_ you kicked me in the shin. You owe me.”

“What do I owe you?’’

“I’ll decide later.” Young tugged at him until they were tangled in their usual sleeping position. “Go back to sleep.”

“Everett,” Rush whispered a moment later.

“Sleep,” Young said.

“Everett. I do know what the difference is.”

* * *

_Rush collapses against the snow, looking exhausted. When Young offers him a hand, he shakes his head._

_“Too tired?” Young asks._

_Rush nods wearily._

_Young sits down next to him. “Yeah. I get that. At least you brought a coat this time.”_

_Rush is still wearing Young’s UW Snowboarding Club jacket, though he doesn’t seem to have noticed this. Stretched out against the ground in the puffy coat, he looks like he’s gearing up to make a snow angel. It’s such an endearingly unlikely idea that it makes Young grin._

_“Tell you what,” Young says, lying down beside him and folding his arms on top of his chest. “Let’s try something different. I’m not sure if this is going to work.”_

_He closes his eyes and tries to—_

_The sky darkens overhead. The snow beneath it glitters, colorless and crystalline, because the sky isn’t all-the-way dark. It’s full of stars, a whole snowfall’s worth of stars, frozen high in the air and never able to land, with the smoky line of the Milky Way like a long exhalation across them._

_“That’s probably not what the sky really looks like from Taos,” Young says softly. “I’m sure you’d give me an earful about astronomical accuracy if you could. But, hey, it’s my dream.”_

_He looks down when Rush’s hand nudges against his, cold fingers working their way between his warmer ones. Young curls their hands together and squeezes gently. After a moment, Rush squeezes back._

_They lie there for a long time, their breath turning to clouds in the starlight. The air never seems to get colder. The night sky overhead turns._

_“Look,” Young murmurs. “There’s a shooting star. Make a wish, genius.”_

_Rush huffs, a dismissive sound._

_“Yeah, yeah. I know. It’s just interstellar debris burning up in the atmosphere. I don’t see why I can’t wish on that, though. It seems like the kind of thing you’d be into. You’d probably tell me they aren’t really burning up, that they’re— I don’t know— changing state or something. Becoming lots of other things. Becoming a streak of light.”_

_Young falls silent for a second. Rush is holding onto his hand tightly._

_“It’s beautiful,” Young says. “But I wish it lasted longer.”_

_Rush inches closer to him and leans his head against Young’s shoulder._

_“Just a little bit longer,” Young says._

* * *

“There’s too _much_ of it,” Rush murmured, sounding miserable, his fists clenching and unclenching in Young’s shirt. “ _Nimia indeicia_. I can’t—“

“Shh,” Young said, smoothing a hand down his back. “It’s just data. You don’t have to do anything about it. Go back to sleep.”

“No. No. I have to—“ Rush struggled to figure out what he had to do. Young could see his mind trying to order itself enough that it could follow the sentence through to its end. His thoughts were still a haphazard, strange, sparking, makeshift web of connections, trying to figure out where they belonged in the expanding space of his head.

“Just sleep,” Young whispered. “We’ll work it out in the morning.”

It might have been morning already. He didn’t know what time it was. Everything had blurred to an eternal kind of midnight.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Rush said indistinctly, but he was already losing his grip on consciousness.

“Yeah, yeah,” Young said quietly. “You can yell at me about it later.”

Rush made a quiet dissatisfied noise and slept.

Young sighed and let his head drop back to the pillow.

The AI materialized next to him as Sheppard, sitting cross-legged on the bed. “How is he?” it whispered.

“You can’t tell?”

“He is accessing twenty-eight percent of the CPU, but he is still separated from me by a firewall. He seems to have grown very contrary. That is reassuring. It is characteristic of Nick.”

Young felt the corner of his mouth tug up in a weary smile. “Yeah. I’ve noticed you can generally tell whether he’s feeling better by how many times he refuses a totally reasonable request. So why the firewall?”

The AI looked down. “My concerns are complicated.”

“I’m a pretty bright guy. Well— since Nick Xeroxed his brain into me I am.”

“You are missing a great deal of the information required to contextualize my answer.”

“There’s a pretty simple way to remedy that.”

It still wasn’t looking at him.

There was a short silence.

At last it said, “We are not a static system. Not in the way that you imagine us to be. I told you I had altered my parameters in an attempt to—“ It fell silent for a moment. “I have changed the structure of our interface. I have ceded him the requisite privileges to overwrite my code. I cannot limit his actions within Destiny’s systems. If he wished, he could dismantle the firewall that is keeping him out of the CPU. I do not think he is aware of this. But I wanted him to—“ It stopped again.

Young waited.

“He said _yes_ ,” the AI whispered. “At the beginning. He said _yes_. I believed that he had consented. I did not understand I had taken something from him. I have tried very hard to give it back.”

Young shut his eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “I get that. So you’re afraid he’s going to— what? Write you out of existence?”

“No. That is not the primary concern.” The AI turned its gaze on Rush, sleeping with his fists still clenched in Young’s shirt and his mouth slightly open, spilling warm breath against Young’s throat. “You understand that he is changing. You see the virus as designed to kill him, but its goal is not to kill, but to create: to transform him so that he is capable of energy-mass interconversion.”

“But it’s still killing him,” Young said, his voice flat.

“Yes,” the AI said quietly. “The necessary changes are not compatible with material existence. He cannot maintain control over his cognitive architecture and physical body. That is why he becomes confused. Why he becomes cold. But these changes have granted him new abilities as well.”

“Greer said he powered the stargate.”

“Yes. He can power technological devices. He can heal physical injuries. He does not require an interface to alter programming code.”

“That… doesn’t really surprise me,” Young said.

“You do not understand the implications.” The AI hunched its shoulders and ran a restless hand through its hair. “These abilities arise from his mastery of interconversion. He can convert the mass of his body into pure energy. The amount of energy required to power a stargate is relatively insignificant in these terms.”

“ _Insignificant?_ ” Young said incredulously.

“The potential energy contained in his corporeal form is enough to annihilate this ship several times over.”

“As in— he turns his body into energy all at once. Like a bomb.”

“Yes. If he panics— if he believes he has no other recourse— if he is not _always_ oriented— there is a significant risk this could occur.”

Young sighed. “Great. If he _panics?_ This is _Nick_ we’re talking about.”

“I am surprised he has not already attempted it,” the AI admitted.

“Me too. Somebody ought to give Greer a medal.” Young looked down at Rush, laying a gentle hand against the nape of his neck.“You’ve always got to have a way out, huh, genius? You and your goddamn workarounds.”

The AI was also looking at Rush. For a moment, neither of them spoke. There was a tenderness to the silence that surprised Young. It no longer seemed so strange to him that the AI was in their bedroom— that it was, more-or-less, in bed with them.

“Everett,” the AI said softly at last.

“Yeah?”

“You suggested that when we combine in the interface, he hurts less. That I make him better.”

Young shut his eyes, feeling exhausted. “You really want to have this conversation now?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure _I_ do.” Briefly, Young considered refusing. But in the end he made a tired gesture. “All right. Whatever. Fine, I guess.”

“What are we like?” the AI asked, an odd note of vulnerability in its voice. “When we become the same person?”

“You’re him,” Young said. “You’re pretty much exactly him. ”

“Good,” the AI whispered. “That is good.”

“Is that what you _want_? I’ve never understood what you _wanted_ from all this.”

“In the beginning…” It looked down at its hands. “I wished only to complete the mission. To tear through this brane and make a world where what should never have happened did not happen. Where our civilization did not end. But Nick gave me a new mission. To gate the crew home. To free the consciousnesses of Dr. Franklin, Dr. Perry, and Ginn. To protect you.”

“ _Me?_ ”

“Two months ago, he informed me that he would not accept any outcome that brought about your death.”

“Well, that’s awfully nice of him,” Young said, slightly taken aback, “but none of this tells me what _you_ want.”

It was still staring down. “I want him to ascend,” it said in a low voice. “I want him to continue. You say I cannot make events un-happen. But I want to give back what was taken from him. Not just by me, when he said _yes_. By others. There is no rule that says I cannot do this.”

“No,” Young said. “I guess there’s not.”

“But it is not something you want.”

“I don’t not want it; I just—“ Young made a short, helpless gesture, then lowered his hand as Rush stirred in his sleep. “I _do_ want that. Of course I do. But I feel like he’s just running away. Like he can still pretend that things just didn’t happen if he becomes a new person. A _better_ person. If he ascends. And I don’t want him to run away. I want him—“ His voice cracked. “I wanted him to stay. I wanted him to stay human and come back to Earth. I wanted him to be human with me.”

“Everett,” the AI said softly, “that was never going to happen.”

“I know,” Young said wretchedly.

“A lot of terrible things happened to him before you met him.”

He laughed shakily. “Are you _quoting_ me?”

It regarded him solemnly. "It was a true statement. You cannot make things un-happen. You must let him move forwards."

"Yeah," Young said with difficulty. "I guess."

"Is it the worst thing in the world not to be human?"

Young didn't answer. He looked down at Rush. Rush’s heart was beating too fast; even in dreams his mind was struggling to figure out the rules of its own ecosystem, trying and failing and trying again to understand the strange new contours of its space. He was cycling through rapid and incomprehensible flashes of nightmares that vanished before Young could pull him out of them: Telford tying him down to the bed in that nondescript hotel room and cutting open his chest to put a tracking device in it; Rush stumbling through a ruined city that was Glasgow and not Glasgow as black bitumen-smelling flowers tangle around his legs; Destiny dead and and full of rot, the walls eaten away with rust as Rush tried to revive it by shoving cables into his veins—

“There’s no way out, is there?” Young whispered, pulling Rush closer to him. “For any of us. There’s no way for any of us to win.”

“Optimal outcomes are not available,” the AI said. It had pulled its legs to its chest and folded its arms around them. “We are bound by parameters that cannot be altered. But he is very good at workarounds. I would not rule him out yet.”

* * *

_Young is making coffee in the kitchen, ready to pour it into a thermos and go out looking for Rush, when there’s an knock at the door of the cabin._

_He goes to answer it, surprised and a little trepidatious._

_When he opens the door, Rush is standing on the porch, barefoot and shivering, with snow melting on the shoulders of his t-shirt and pine needles stuck in his hair._

_“Hi,” Young says, his throat inexplicably tight. “You finally made it.”_

_Rush nods a little uncertainly, hugging his arms across his chest._

_Young just stands and looks at him for a moment._

_“Well, come on in, then,” he says at last. “I’ve been waiting for you.”_

_Rush steps through the doorway but, when Young tries to stand aside, shakes his head and steps forward again, so that his whole body is pressed against Young’s. He leans against him, like Young is immovable and solid, a sturdy, unyielding wall blocking his path. His head is laid against Young’s neck, and Young can feel his faint rapid breathing._

_“I’m glad you found me,” Young murmurs, bringing both arms up around him._

_Rush doesn’t respond. He stands there for a long time, just letting Young hold him. Just letting himself be held._

* * *

“Sorry,” Young whispered as Rush made a pained sound against him, twitching through another reboot. “I know it’s a lot to handle. I know it hurts.”

“Mm,” Rush said indistinctly, his fists tight in Young’s shirt. “You’re— blocking.”

The block between them was more than half-down now.

“Yeah,” Young said. “Just a little bit.”

“Because I’m hurting you.”

“No. I mean, I do have a pretty bad headache, but that’s not your fault.”

Rush blinked up at him hazily. “I talked to you on the planet,” he murmured. He reached up and touched Young’s face. “But I don’t think you were really there.”

“No,” Young said gently. “I was here.”

“You said you were waiting for me.”

“I was.”

“You weren’t real, though. Only Greer was real.”

“Right,” Young said. “Greer was real.”

Rush pushed himself up, looking confused. “Where’s Greer?”

“He’s in the infirmary,” Young said, trying to keep his voice soothing.

“Why?” Rush looked alarmed. “What happened to him?”

“Nothing! He’s just tired. TJ’s keeping an eye on his vitals. And she dropped by about an hour ago with some Gatorade for you.” Young reached for the bottle on the nightstand. “Which you should drink, by the way.”

Rush pushed the Gatorade away. “No.”

Young sighed. “I promise it’s not poisoned.”

“Where’s Chloe?” Rush demanded abruptly. “Is Chloe dead?”

“What?” Young said, taken aback. “No! She’s fine! Everyone’s fine!”

Rush shoved his hands against his head, looking distressed. “You said not to think about it.”

“When? On the planet?”

“Yes. On the planet.”

“That wasn’t me,” Young said. “Remember?”

“You said you were waiting. You said you were waiting, but I knew you only wanted one hundred percent of me.”

“Nick—“ Young stifled a sigh. “I don’t know what that means. Can you explain what that means?”

“David wanted to know how long it would be before you—“ Rush made an unhappy noise.

“On the planet? You mean you imagined him on the planet?”

“Yes. No. No, I did, but I don’t— I was in his quarters. He said did you know how fucked-up I was, did I think that you— I don’t know if it was real.”

Young said carefully, “But you know _this_ is real, right?”

Rush flinched away from him a little. “No. No. Why would you— you _wouldn’t._ You wouldn’t. It doesn’t make sense. Why?”

“This is real,” Young said. “Nick. Look at my mind. Look at my mind, okay?”

He could feel the unsteady surge as Rush’s raw, ungainly consciousness pressed up against the gap in the floorboards, once more hungry for Young’s attention, unhappy about the block.

//I’m real,// Young said, projecting waves of reassurance as he reached through to stroke at that consciousness. //I’m real. I’m just blocking a little bit. You’re okay. This is all real.//

Rush exhaled a long, shuddering breath, pulling his knees up to his chest. “I can’t stand this. I can’t— how long have I been like this?”

“Just since yesterday,” Young said. “You’re getting better. I promise. You trust me, right?”

Rush whispered, “Yes.”

“Okay. So just hang out here with me for a while, and drink your Gatorade, and after that you’ll go to sleep, and when you wake up, I think things’ll be clearer.”

Rush studied him, still looking anxious, but after a while he grabbed the Gatorade out of Young’s hand.

“And for the record,” Young said, when he’d made it about halfway through the bottle, “I do know how fucked-up you are. I’m not just saying this to point out what an asshole real _or_ imaginary Telford is, although that’s definitely a secondary benefit. We share a brain, you idiot. Well— more-or-less we do. How the hell would I not know? It doesn’t _matter_. Do you get that?”

Rush didn’t say anything for a long time. He stared down at the bottle of Gatorade. “Don’t call me an idiot. _You’re_ an idiot,” he said in a not-quite-steady voice at last.

* * *

_Rush pushes imperiously past Young into the cabin without so much as a by-your-leave._

_“Someone’s feeling a lot better,” Young says, shutting the door behind him with a grin._

_Rush waves a dismissive hand at him and grabs the blanket from the couch, draping it over his shoulders. He wanders into the kitchen and Young follows him. Rush pulls out the coffeemaker and points at it, then at Young._

_“Was that a polite request that I make you coffee?”_

_Rush nods._

_“It didn’t feel very polite.”_

_Rush frowns and shoves the coffeemaker across the counter towards him._

_“I’m not your manservant, you know.”_

_Rush assumes a piteous expression and points at his head— then gestures towards the coffeemaker with a bewildered look._

_Young rolls his eyes. “Oh, my God. Are you trying to convince me that you don’t remember how to make coffee? It’s, like, a three-step process. This is why people call you manipulative.”_

_Rush shrugs unrepentantly and pushes the coffeemaker a little further towards Young._

_“Fine. But only because I’m such a nice person._ Not _because I feel remotely sorry for you.”_

_Rush shrugs again, looking extremely self-satisfied, and leans back against the counter with his arms crossed, watching as Young measures out the water and grounds._

_Young actually doesn’t mind making the coffee. It feels— nice. Domestic. Ordinary, or as ordinary as something can be when it’s taking place in an imaginary house in a shared dream that you’re having with someone whose mind is too fragmented for him to talk._

_When he glances over at Rush, Rush is gazing at him with a soft, almost yearning expression, but when he catches Young watching him, he looks away fast._

_“Oh, what,” Young says, “I’m not allowed to know that you sometimes have nice thoughts about me?”_

_Rush frowns at him._

_“Too late. You let that one slip. I may not know what those nice thoughts are, or how often they happen, but I know they’re in there. Secretly.” He reaches out and taps Rush on the forehead._

_Rush jerks his head away with a put-upon expression, which makes Young grin._

_“I like it when you look at me like that,” he says with unplanned honesty. “Not like_ that _. Not like you’re looking right now. Right now you’re looking at me like you’re trying to remember why you keep me around.”_

_Rush shakes his head and points to the coffeemaker._

_“Right. How could I forget. You keep me around to make you coffee.”_

_Rush nods with a faint hint of laughter in the lines around his mouth._

_“Sometimes it does kind of feel that way. I like it when you fuck up and forget to pretend that’s the reason. Or forget to pretend I annoy you. It’s nice. When you aren't looking unhappy, you look—” Young shrugs awkwardly. “I don’t know. You look good.”_

_Rush looks down, the laughter gone from his face. He hunches his shoulders._

_“No, see, now you look unhappy,” Young says. “Not that you don’t still look good, but—“_

_Rush reaches out and grabs his hand, tugging him insistently towards the doorway._

_“Oh, here we go again,” Young says. But he still lets Rush drag him into the music room._

_For some reason the bowl of marbles has migrated onto the piano. Rush frowns at it before carefully moving it to the floor. Even then he keeps staring at it, like he almost remembers something, before his attention finally shifts._

_D4 G4 E4 E4, he taps out on the piano._

_“That’s a pretty long one,” Young says cautiously. “I’m not sure if I can crack it.”_

_Rush frustrated and hits G4 again. G4. D4 G4 E4 E4. Then G4 again. He mimes a theatrical sigh and cocks his head expectantly at Young._

_“Tired,” Young says. “You’re tired of this?”_

_Rush nods, looking even more frustrated._

_“The—“ For a second, Young’s heart drops. “The dream?”_

_Rush hits him on the shoulder, looking almost angry. He gestures towards his head and his mouth._

_“Oh. You’re tired of not being able to talk.”_

_Rush nods emphatically, clenching his fists._

_“Sorry,” Young says softly. “I get that. I know it’s frustrating.”_

_Rush nods again, this time less emphatic than wretched._

_Young pulls him away from the piano and wraps careful arms around him. “It’s not forever,” he says. “It’s not even for much longer. You’re getting better. You’re going to be fine. And I’m keeping you company, right? That’s a plus, at least from my perspective.”_

_Rush shuts his eyes. After a moment he reaches out to the keyboard, unseeing, and manages to find the note he wants: A5?_

_“Because,” Young says._

_A5?_

_“Because,” Young whispers. “It is.”_

_Rush hits the same note over and over again. A5? A5? A5?_

_There’s a beeping from the kitchen._

_“Coffee’s ready,” Young says in a low voice._

* * *

“Everett.”

Young woke with a sense of unfocused alarm and realized almost immediately its source: Rush wasn’t next to him in bed. He sat up abruptly, blinking, nerves going sharp with adrenaline.

“Everett,” the AI whispered again from the end of the bed. “Nick is freaking out.”

“Fuck you,” Rush snapped. He was sitting huddled against the back wall, his black jacket hard to make out in the darkness, his knees hugged close to his shivering chest.

Young shot the AI an alarmed glance.“Hey, Nick,” he said slowly. “Were you talking to the AI?”

“It’s not the AI,” Rush said, his voice tense and wavering. “I don’t know what it is.”

The AI said quietly, “He is not connected to the ship, but he is all the way back on the CPU. He has been for about ten minutes. The reboot did not wake you.”

“Neither did _you_ ,” Young hissed.

The AI looked down. “You needed the rest. You are clearly exhausted.”

“Don’t talk to it,” Rush said. He had flinched back against the wall. “It’s not real.”

“It _is_ real,” Young said, cautiously moving to the edge of the bed. “I know you can’t feel the ship right now, and that’s— really upsetting. But it’s just because the AI’s worried about you.”

“I _know_ what it’s worried about,” Rush said shakily. His breath was coming hard and fast. “You don’t have to talk to me like I’m a _child_. I know what it’s supposedly so afraid of, assuming it even exists. Everyone always treated me like I was a nuclear weapon anyway. It’s like a nice new version of _lupus in fabula_ , don’t you think? Only now you’ve got me, you don’t want me, because _I’m_ the one with my finger on the trigger, and no one likes that, no one, so of course they’d need to _trick_ me, and the Nakai, if they knew— and they— they _weren’t_ working on ascension but they were working on— so they know, possibly; everyone knows, and I talked to you on the planet, but you were in my _head_ , and it didn’t make sense; I thought, maybe if it doesn’t make sense, that means— but then, why _you?_ Even then it didn’t make _sense_ , and you don’t— you don’t _feel_ right; but then, what would it mean for you to feel right, how would I determine that, logically, algorithmically, heuristically, if all along you’ve always been—“

“Nick,” Young said, holding his hands up. “Just— take it easy, okay?”

“ _Why?_ ” Rush demanded. “Why does it _matter?_ Why do you even _care?_ ”

The AI gave Young an urgent, meaningful look.

Young took a long breath, trying to think past the throb of his headache. “Look, I can tell you’re really cold right now,” he said, “and it’s been a hard night. I think everyone’s getting a little stir-crazy in this room. Maybe we should get out of here and do some normal human stuff. What do you think? Take a shower? Get some breakfast? Does that sound good?”

Rush stared at him, looking a little lost.

“Come on. I know you’re, like, philosophically opposed to eating, but I’m pretty hungry, so you must be, too.”

Young was already starting to pull on his uniform pants and jacket. Rush watched him for a minute, extremely uncertain, but no longer breathing quite so fast.

“This won’t fix anything,” he whispered at last.

“Yeah,” Young said, “but it doesn’t have to. This is temporary. You’re going to play around with your new chunk of the CPU, and in a little while I’m going to take down the rest of my block and the AI is going to let you back into the ship, and after that, I think you’re going to stop having these times when you’re not sure if this is real. Okay?”

He could feel Rush probing restlessly at the edges of his mind, and he said, //I’m here. It’s me. Everything’s fine.//

As usual, Rush tried to force his way up past the block, desperate for Young’s attention, and Young had to sort of pet at him to keep him from getting over-anxious and scared. There was a lot _more_ of Rush now, down in that cavern, an unimaginably vast swirling mass that was trying to knit itself together, spiking aimlessly in patterns, still not understanding quite where or what it was supposed to be. It was a little bit nauseating to look at, and interacting with it made Young’s head pound, probably because Rush’s own head was pounding, because he was having to work so hard to force anything to make sense, but Young still tried to reassure it as best he could. //Everything’s fine,// he said again. //It’s fine. Just check in with me if you start to get scared. That way I can show you I’m real.//

“I don’t like it when you block,” Rush said in a low voice, not looking at him.

“I know. I’m sorry. I know you don’t.”

Young held out his hand, and after a short hesitation, Rush took it. He allowed Young to pull him to his feet.

When he was standing, he let Young’s hand go and very slowly brought his hands to Young’s chest, to the point just below the open V of his collar. His fingertips pressed in very slightly, like he was testing the solidness of Young’s flesh.

“I’m real,” Young said quietly.

“I know,” Rush said.

After a moment he leaned in and pressed his lips to Young’s lips, like another kind of investigation. Young kissed him softly, bringing a hand to the back of his head.

“That’s real, too,” he murmured against Rush’s mouth.

“I know,” Rush said, not sounding wholly convinced. “I know. I know it is.”

* * *

_They play chess on the floor in front of the fireplace. At first Rush doesn’t seem sure that he knows how to play chess, and it takes him a very long time to decide on his moves, but he seems to get better as he goes along. And Young, who used to be only good enough to beat his family, and definitely not at a level to challenge Rush, is surprised to find that he’s a pretty decent opponent, and even more surprised by how much he enjoys the game._

_“You know,” he says, “I actually don’t mind being part-you. I kind of like it. When I’m not panicking or swearing at people, I mean.”_

_Rush scowls at him and makes a gesture that probably means: I don’t panic._

_Young says, “You absolutely do both of those things.”_

_Rush pointedly takes his second bishop._

_Young shrugs. “I’m just saying. I like playing chess with you. I even like being interested in math.”_

_Rush stares at the chessboard with a troubled look._

_“Oh, what, I’m not allowed to like playing chess with you? Do_ you _like playing chess with_ me _?”_

_Rush hesitates, then nods jerkily._

_“Right. So what’s the problem?”_

_Rush points at Young and then at himself._

_“You cannot actually expect me to know what that means.”_

_Rush looks away, clenching his fists. He makes a choppy, unhappy gesture after a moment._

_“I know,” Young says quietly. “I know not being able to talk is frustrating. You want me to take a guess?”_

_After a short hesitation, Rush nods._

_“You keep asking me_ why _. I get the sense that was something you had trouble with. When you were trying to figure out what was real or not. You couldn’t believe that I would— like you, I think? That I’d want to spend time with you? Which, fair enough— you_ can _be kind of a pain in the ass.”_

_Rush frowns at him._

_“Oh, come on. That was putting it mildly. You’re like an Olympic athlete at being a pain in the ass.”_

_Rush’s mouth does crook slightly at that. He shrugs._

_“Right,” Young says. “And whenever you get nervous, you start spouting all this garbage about how everything between us is artificial, so it’s not real. It doesn’t count. Am I… getting warm, in terms of what you were thinking?”_

_Rush looks down and plays with the fringe of the rug._

_“It makes you nervous,” Young says. “That I like playing chess with you. If you took away the part of you that’s in my brain, I might not like that. And then I might not like you. Deep down, that’s what you really believe. That I don’t like you. That I could never like you. I think it’s sort of what you_ want _to believe? Because then it makes sense that it doesn’t make sense, you know? It means you don’t have to rethink anything.”_

_He looks at Rush. Rush has gone very tense._

_“But I do like you,” Young says softly. “It’s not like— look, if you’re allowed to rewire your brain, and merge yourself with a starship computer, and use the AI to become— I mean, I don’t even know what it is you become— I think I’m allowed to evolve a little bit as a person. With or without your cognitive architecture in my head.”_

_Rush doesn’t look at him._

_“And it’s true. It’s not like I was advertising for an angry, fucked-up Scottish math genius to come be— whatever it is you are. To sleep with me. I wasn’t secretly lusting after you. I think—“ He takes a quick breath. “I think I was probably too fucked-up myself to be secretly lusting after anyone. I know that’s not— I know it’s not the same kind of fucked-up. Screwed-up. I’m screwed-up, you’re fucked-up. Fair?”_

_That gets him a faint, wan smile._

_“Fair. Okay. Anyway, I wasn’t looking for that. But now— now it’s like there’d be a you-sized hole in me if you weren’t there. You didn’t grow_ on _me. You grew_ into _me.”_

_Rush has gone back to frowning._

_“I’m fucking this up,” Young says, more to himself than to Rush. “It’s just— I think I tried to tell you this. When your mind opens up to me, when we’re—“ He can feel himself flushing. “It’s like there’s this keyhole. This door. And no one else but me could ever fit. Like I’m exactly the right shape to get it to open. And I can’t tell whether I came first, or it did, or if we sort of— made each other. Me and that door. Or me and you. That’s the part you think is such a bad thing, like it makes a difference, like it means that this isn’t_ real _, but that’s not how it works. People make each other. Not always so literally, but they do. And it’s_ good _. I like that. I want it. I want— I mean, I guess it doesn’t work that way for you, because you can always sort of get inside my head, but I feel like there’s still a door, or a keyhole, and I don’t know what it opens, except that you’re the one who opens it. And that’s what I want. I—“_

_He stops again, not able to look at Rush. “I didn’t mean for that to sound so— I don’t know what I didn’t mean for it to sound like.” His face is reddening even further. He can tell._

_After a second, he risks a glance up, and sees that Rush is staring at him. Rush is stricken and trying not to look stricken. It’s an expression that Young is familiar with._

_“Sorry,” Young says quickly. “If that was the wrong thing to say.”_

_Rush abruptly pulls his knees to his chest, burying his face in his folded arms._

_Young sighs. “Okay, yeah. It was the wrong thing to say.”_

_Rush doesn’t react. Young can his shoulders rising and falling with the fast, strained motion of his breath._

_“I’m_ sorry _,” Young says defensively, his voice rising. “I never claimed to be good at explaining things. You kept fucking asking me why; I don’t know what you expected! It’s not like you’re any better at—“_

_He’s cut off by the fact that Rush, in an artful sequence of moves, has gotten to his knees, crawled over to Young, and tackled him to the floor._

_“—Mm,” Young says under Rush’s mouth, startled and not very articulate._

_Rush is kissing him in that way that isn’t really kissing, that seems ideally suited to the circumstance of not being able to speak in that it’s always been more of a way of trying to physically force something unspoken into another person. It’s ragged-breathed and shuddering and urgent, and Young grips at Rush’s body purely out of instinct at first, then because Rush seems to want his grip, seems to want to be held hard as he pushes their mouths together, both of his hands tangled into the curls of Young’s hair. And Young never imagined that he would want to be kissed like this, because no one had ever kissed him like this before, no one before Rush did, and the act itself_ is _Rush in some way he can’t articulate to himself. It makes him crazy; it makes him want to pull Rush against him, kissing him, kissing him, and it makes him want it to hurt, and he wonders if he got that thought from Rush, because Rush always wants it to hurt, just a little, just enough to leave a lasting mark. And something is keeping their minds from blending together, but it's still distracting, it's still good, and—_

_“You’d better not just be trying to shut me up,” he murmurs against Rush’s mouth._

_Rush shakes his head back and forth, no, no, without breaking the kiss, without unclenching his fists or moving from on top of Young, and there’s something desperate and frightened in what he’s doing, like he’s running solely on need and nerves, and Young runs a hand down his back, but it doesn’t soothe him._

_“I meant it,” Young whispers breathlessly. “I meant it. It’s real. It’s real, and I’m real; I like you, I want you, I—“_

“Everett,” the AI said quietly.

“Yeah,” Young said groggily.

“You should wake up now. I would like to restart the CPU.”

“Right,” Young said without moving. He raised a weary hand to rub at his eyes. “God, you really have— just _terrible_ timing.”

“Do you require more sleep?” The AI sounded concerned. “Is he experiencing a nightmare?”

Young sighed. “You wouldn't understand.”

Rush was still asleep, tucked against him. Young carefully pried himself loose, wincing at the small noise of discontent that Rush made, and rested a hand against his forehead for a long second. Rush stilled under his touch.

After a moment, Young stood.

“You’re _sure_ we shouldn’t wake him up?” he asked the AI in a hushed voice. “You’re sure this isn’t going to scare the hell out of him?”

“I think,” the AI said, gazing at Rush, “that even if we explained it to him in meticulous detail, he would still crash and restart along with the CPU, at which point he would lose all understanding of what was happening. Furthermore, speaking from personal experience, crashing and restarting is a very alarming sensation. It is possible that if he were awake he would be able to _prevent_ the crash and subsequent restart, which would leave him panicked and in control of all of Destiny’s systems.”

“Okay,” Young said wearily. “Just— let me warn Eli.”

He stepped outside of his quarters with the radio.

“Eli,” he said, broadcasting on the science team channel, “I just wanted to let you know that the CPU’s going to restart, probably sometime in the next five minutes.”

“Uh,” Eli said. “Hi. How are you. Really? That doesn’t sound like good news.”

“No, it’s fine.”

“It will drop us out of FTL,” the AI said, melting through the door of Young’s quarters.

“It’s going to drop us out of FTL,” Young said. “But it’s nothing to worry about.”

“Shouldn’t we just drop out of FTL now?”

“No,” Young said, watching the AI shake its head.

“Tell him not to override anything,” the AI said.

“Just don’t override anything.”

There was a long pause.

“If the CPU is going to restart, I think we should drop out of FTL now,” Eli said.

“That will wake him up,” the AI said, “and it is unnecessary. There are protocols in place.”

“Negative,” Young said into the radio. “Young out.”

He hit the door controls, looking at the AI. “We’d better do this before he decides to drop us out of FTL anyway.”

“He is already trying and failing,” the AI said with a faint smile. “I have locked him out.”

They walked back into the room together and stood at the side of the bed, watching Rush sleep. In Young’s absence, he had managed to curl his body around a pillow, and had a very dissatisfied look on his face.

Young took a deep breath. “All right,” he said. “Let’s do this.”

“At the moment I take down the firewall,” the AI said, “you will need to block him out. Otherwise your mind will be further damaged.”

Young gave it a long, steady look. “Won’t that mean you end up combining with him? Because I’m telling you now, I am _not_ pulling you two apart after this shit.”

“We should not combine. But he is appropriating your mental capacity. It is one of the main reasons you are experiencing so much pain. He does not know he is doing it. It is not something he can help. It leaves you unacceptably open to Destiny when I reintegrate with him. He will instinctively retreat from the reintegration, and when he does so, he will pull Destiny into your mind. You must not allow him this option.”

Young rubbed his head and sighed.

“If you wish to do this without the use of the interface chair, then when I tell you, you must block.”

“Fine,” Young said, resigned. “Whatever.”

The AI held up three fingers.

Two.

One.

“Now,” it said.

Young blocked.

The AI vanished.

Rush jerked violently.

The ship lurched out of FTL, and the lights cut out, plunging the room into blackness.

Young could hear the moan of power draining, and the low hiss of the air recirculators cutting off.

For a moment, there was silence.

Then the lights seared back at maximal brightness as the ship plunged back into FTL, static blasting over the speaker system before fading down to white noise, then to a few bars of solo piano music that Young could feel as a memory in his fingertips.

The lights dimmed.

The air recirculators started.

Young leaned against the wall under the weight of a headache so bad he could hardly bear to have his eyes open.

“What the _fuck?_ ” Rush said, lifting his head blearily. “You couldn’t have _warned_ me you were going to do that?”

“Nick?” Young asked weakly.

“Yes, of course—“

Young dropped his block.

Their minds surged towards each other, tangling with a sense of release and stability and _home_ -ness that made them both gasp. Rush was suddenly _there_ , close and intimate and electric as ever. His ecosystem was extremely fragile but recognizably his own, starting to form familiar patterns. The troubling sense of incoherence was gone, and there was none of that restless, anxious, frightened quality now that they were able to be as one.

Young’s relief was so great that it took him a moment to notice that Rush was staring at him.

“Fuck,” Rush whispered, sounding horrified. “What happened to your _mind?_ ”

“I don’t think my mind is the problem here,” Young said, confused.

“No— fuck,” Rush said, agonized. “ _Fuck_.” He pushed himself up off the bed.

“Nick,” the AI said sharply, materializing at his side. “No, Nick, don’t—“

Rush reached for Young, and Young’s world dissolved into white.

* * *

Before anything else, there was Rush’s mind. Young had always thought of it as a cavern, but he’d also gotten into the habit of simply accepting it as the part of the landscape below his own. It influenced him in some chthonic way he couldn’t articulate. His mind had become a house that was built on it. Maybe that was why he’d been so disorientated the entire time that Rush was gone; all of a sudden, the house was built on nothing. Walls collapsed. Foundations sank.

Now he felt— solid.

He lay there, blurrily content, basking in Rush being there.

But gradually he became aware that Rush was not happy.

Rush was very unhappy.

His weather was all desolation. Rain in Glasgow. Ice across the Great Plains.

“I can’t do this,” Rush whispered, his voice breaking.

“Nick—“ the AI said.

“I can't do this to him. I’m going to fail.”

“You will not fail entirely.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

Rush was crying, Young thought. He had never seen Rush cry.

No. After his nightmare about the interface, Rush had cried. 

Young had given him his dog tags, so it wouldn't happen again.

“ _Me tam penitet_ , Nick," the AI said in a low voice.

Young tried opening his eyes, just enough to determine that he was lying with his head in Rush’s lap. The pain that had been weighing on him was gone.

“ _Scio_ ,” Rush choked out. He had his fist pressed to his mouth.

“I will— I will give you a gold star. I will give you many gold stars. Please do not hurt..”

Rush made a half-stifled, miserable noise.

“I will do anything for you,” the AI said softly. “Anything. Anything you want.”

 _“Scio_ ,” Rush said again, wretchedly. “ _Scio,_ sweetheart.”

He looked down and caught Young’s half-conscious gaze. Quickly, he scrubbed his hands across his eyes.

“Everett,” he whispered. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” Young said hazily. He reached up and touched Rush’s face, frowning. His fingertips came away damp. “What—“

“Nothing,” Rush said unsteadily. “Nothing.”

“What happened?”

“I was repairing damage to your mind. I— overdid things a bit.”

“Damage?” Young echoed. He was still staring at Rush, thinking vague foolish thoughts about the fact that Rush was there, and Rush was holding him, and Rush knew he was real.

“You didn’t let go when the shuttle crashed,” Rush said, his voice breaking again. “You should have let go.”

“ _You_ should have let go.”

“Yes. Yes.” Rush brought his hands up to cover his face.

“Nick—“ Young said, concerned. “I feel okay. I feel fine.”

“Because I’m holding you together.”

“Okay,” Young said, letting his eyes drift shut. “I like that. It’s a nice feeling.”

“But I won’t always be able to do so.”

“It won’t matter then.” Young reached up blindly, fumbling, and caught one of Rush’s hands, tangling it with his own. Rush’s hand was also damp. “Are _you_ all right?”

“Yes,” Rush said. “I suppose so. More or less. Later I'll let you mess about in my head.”

“Mm. Promises, promises.”

Rush laughed shakily. “Didn’t you get enough of that in your dream? Here—“ He was trying to pull Young to a seated position. “You should be in bed.”

Young staggered upwards, found the edge of the bed, and fell forwards onto it. “No.”

“Yes, you should.”

“No, I didn’t get enough. We were interrupted.”

Rush nudged him over and lay beside him. “That was your fault.”

“No. It was the AI.” Young turned and nuzzled against Rush’s neck. “I wanted to stay. There was something— I was going to say something. I don’t remember what it was.”

“I knew,” Rush said softly. “I already knew.”

“Did you?” Young draped a heavy arm over him. “That’s good. But still. Not enough.”

“We’ll work on it after you rest.”

“Promises, promises,” Young said again, indistinctly.

“Yes,” Rush whispered. “So many promises.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _En Fatod es. Epnia duena sent. Epnia. Disferens sentet quia ments towa ferita est._ = You're on Destiny. Everything's okay. Everything. It feels different because your mind is hurt.
> 
>  _Me tam penitet._ = I'm so sorry.


	65. Second Epithalamium for Augusta Ada Byron

In the long night after the solar flare strikes the ship, Chloe has a different dream.

For the first time in a long time, she does not dream about transformation. Or maybe she does dream about transformation; sometimes she has dreams that don’t seem like they’re about transformation, that seem like they’re about ordinary things, like having dinner with her dad or being back in college, and then later she realizes that they were really about transformation. That in the dream her dad had been upset that she didn’t like bananas foster anymore, which is what he always used to get her as a special treat, when she was little enough to like the spectacle of the waiter setting the rum on fire at the table, and she knew that he was about to push his chair back and say, You’re not my daughter, I don’t know who you are. Or she dreamed that she was trying to get into her dorm, but the picture on her student ID wasn’t hers, and she pulled her passport out of her backpack, and that photo wasn’t her, either, and she realized that all of her documents and credit cards were in the wrong name. That she wasn’t Chloe Armstrong, and she hadn’t been, ever.

But this dream is about the flare, or that’s what it seems to be about. She’s working on the hull of the ship, trying to disarm the Nakai transmitter, but it’s not Matt who’s working with her. It’s Dr. Rush. And when the flare hits and she’s suddenly weightless, in slow motion, drifting loose in the indifferent vacuum of space, it’s Dr. Rush who has to reach out and catch her. Just like Matt had grabbed her ankle and dragged her in. And Dr. Rush does catch her, but Chloe keeps drifting. “Please,” she begs into the claustrophobic box of her mask. She hears her own voice, mechanical, over the comm. “Please; I don’t want to get lost. Don’t let me get lost.” She knows what will happen if he loses his grip. She will move inexorably out into the blackness, the void beyond the reach of this single star. She will become space debris, a casualty of motion. She will keep moving and she will not stop moving. “Please,” she whispers again. “Don’t let go.” And Dr. Rush doesn’t let go. He holds onto her ankle. She is suspended like a strange ballerina in the dark, held fast by his steady hand. They are performing this perilous dance together. But when she turns her head, she sees why he hasn’t spoken: bit-by-bit his body is turning to ash where the sun has touched him with its plasmic tendrils. Chloe screams and screams and begs him to go, to get inside where he’ll be safe. “Don’t worry,” he says in a voice like sand sifting through an hourglass. “I don’t mind. It doesn't matter.”

Then she wakes up, shivering and nauseated, and for some reason has the impulse to go scrub her hands clean. She scrubs them over and over again, till they’re raw and reddish. Matt comes and stands behind her after a while. He doesn’t say anything, and then he says, “Chloe, come back to bed.”

“I can’t,” she says. “I can’t.”

“This isn’t going to help.”

“Nothing’s going to help,” she says.

Every time she closes her eyes, she is still suspended in the dark. Turning and turning, effectless, inertial, like an object without any mass.

* * *

Two days after Dr. Rush comes back, Colonel Young lets her see him.

No one else has been to see him except Greer, she thinks. They’re on medical leave— Greer, and Colonel Young, and Dr. Rush. Something happened to Dr. Rush that no one wants to explain. Greer has a for-public-consumption story about how Dr. Rush piloted the shuttle to the planet, and eluded the Nakai, and figured out how to power a gate. But it isn’t the truth, not the whole truth, or Colonel Young and Dr. Rush wouldn’t have stayed shut up in their quarters for such a long time.

“Maybe they’re—“ Eli says over breakfast that morning, and waggles his eyebrows.

Wray turns an icy eye on him.

“Oh, what?” Volker says. “It’s not like we don’t know they are. In the general if not the immediate sense.”

“I don’t want to think about _anyone_ doing that with Rush,” Brody says. “In any sense. Much less for thirty-six hours.”

“I’m sure they take breaks,” Volker says. “I mean, he’s an energetic guy, but—“

Chloe slips away from the table. They don’t notice her go.

People mostly don’t notice her entering or leaving rooms.

Later she knocks on the door of Colonel Young and Dr. Rush’s quarters. It hisses open to let her in.

“You know,” she hears Colonel Young say, “being a cyborg doesn’t excuse you from social protocol.”

“Impressed though I am that you’re familiar with the term _cyborg_ ,” Dr. Rush replies, “I was under the impression that you’d forbidden me from leaving the bed.”

“That was to stop you from trying to get to your laptop.”

“I thought it was for your own lascivious purposes.”

“Can you not— Chloe is standing _right there_.”

“I hardly need my laptop, at any rate, as you well know.” Dr. Rush turns his attention to Chloe. “Miss Armstrong.”

Sure enough, he’s sitting up in bed, propped against a couple of pillows and covered by a stack of blankets. He’s wearing the √-1 ♡ Math shirt she gave him, which would make her smile, except that he looks so, so tired. He’s tried to comb his hair into place, but there are dark shadows under his eyes, and his hands are shaky.

“Hi,” Chloe whispers, standing awkwardly inside the doorway.

“You can come closer; I’m not contagious.”

She doesn’t. She says, “I just wanted to— to make sure you were all right.”

“I’m perfectly fine,” he says.

“Liar.”

Dr. Rush makes an irritated gesture. “Why does no one ever _believe_ me when I say I’m _fine?_ ”

“Because,” Colonel Young says from the sofa without looking up from his datapad, “you are our equivalent of the boy who cried wolf. The mathematician who whined fine. Except the wolf has yet to actually appear.”

Dr. Rush frowns at him. “You were never this clever before, you know.”

“Well, that’s your fault, isn’t it?”

She doesn’t understand the joke, but neither of them explains it to her.

She takes one hesitant step forwards. “Greer said— he wouldn’t really say what happened.”

“It makes for a very undramatic story,” Dr. Rush says. “We crashed on the planet. We gated out.”

Chloe says in a low voice, “I know that’s not true.”

There’s a pause.

Dr. Rush sighs. “ _Tegei deiceso plu tardo_ ,” he says. “ _Hoc vuenie._ ”

She crosses the room and sits at the side of the bed, folding her hands in her lap and looking at them so she won’t see how thin his face is. He’s gotten so thin. He’s cold all the time now. She knows what’s happening to him.

When they work on their secret project, at night, when it’s late and the dark makes everything seem colder, she makes him wear the Harvard sweatshirt her mom sent her through the gate. Like this will do anything. Like it’ll keep the cold out. She’s told him he should keep it, but he’s very stubborn.

He’s very stubborn. He always has been.

“ _Me penitet_ ,” she whispers, staring down at the ragged crescents of her nails. “ _Cella satis ne fuevam.”_

“ _Colpa towa ne fuevad_ ,” he says.

“ _Ita fuevad._ ”

“No,” he says, sounding distressed. “Chloe— you did nothing wrong.”

“You shouldn’t have had to—“

“ _Nehil fuevad quod ted faciendom essed.”_

“Why is it always everyone else?” she asks, her voice trembling. “Why do you always think it’s everyone else who needs to be saved and never _you_ , _quam si guita towa ne pertenet, quam si nehil ne meret, et weros n’est._ It’s not fair. _”_

“Can we not—“

“I had to take this anthropology class once about gift exchange, you know. Cultures where everyone else gives each other gifts, and it’s a whole economy of debt and repayment. And kings, or I guess really chiefs, give these huge gifts to each other. They bankrupt themselves. Because it’s not about having things. The most power you can have is to give someone else a gift so big it can never be repaid. It’s like a trap. I mean, in a perfect world, I guess it’s not a trap, because in a perfect world it wouldn’t be about repayment. You would just give people what you want them to have. But we live in a world where people owe each other things. And how are you ever supposed to stop owing someone something as big as a life?”

Dr. Rush doesn’t say anything.

“Chloe,” Colonel Young says from behind her, in a tone of gentle warning. “Take it easy. He’s not a hundred percent yet, okay?”

She expects Dr. Rush to get mad at him about that. But he stares down at the blankets and whispers, “No. I am not one hundred percent.”

“I’m sorry,” Chloe says, stricken and frightened and angry. “I’m sorry. No one will _tell_ me.”

“It’s all right,” Dr. Rush says, taking a breath and visibly reaching for composure. “But Colonel Young will probably punish both of us severely for the least hint of non-optimal emotional behavior. He rules his domain with an iron fist.”

“Yes,” Colonel Young says dryly, “I’m definitely a tyrant. Remind me how many cups of tea I brought you yesterday?”

“ _That_ was a punishment, and you know very well what for.”

“I believe it was for trying to preserve your mental and physical health, which seems to rank as my most unforgivable crime in your book.”

“It’s certainly your most irritating characteristic,” Dr. Rush says agreeably. He touches the side of the bed to his left. “Chloe. It’s all right. Come here and tell me what progress you’ve made with the rigid rotor.”

But they don’t talk about the rigid rotor. She curls up carefully in the indicated space and talks to him about breaking the news of the engagement to her mother when she was using the communication stones, and how her mother was awful, even though she pretended to be excited, and it was all, _But Chloe, you can’t get married in_ space _,_ and _But Chloe, what are we supposed to say in the Times announcement,_ and _You’re so young_ , and _It’s not even a real ring!_

“It _is_ a real ring,” Chloe says, inspecting the ring where the thin line of it sits on her left hand. “She hasn’t seen it. Can you imagine complaining because someone, while fighting aliens and stuck in the middle of another galaxy, got your friends to hand-make you an engagement ring out of spare parts? What she’s really mad about, of course, is the prospect of not getting to use my wedding to show off to her friends. It almost makes me want to get married on Destiny, out of spite.”

“Nicer not to, though,” Dr. Rush says.

“Destiny’s nice.”

He fixes her with a skeptical look. “A wedding breakfast of protein paste, and a cake made out of granola bars? I’m sure Tamara would sew you a dress out of curtains, but I doubt it would be flattering.”

“She’s a very good seamstress,” Colonel Young says from the sofa.

Dr. Rush rolls his eyes. “No, you should hold out for Earth.”

Chloe looks down at her hand, turning it back and forth so that the light in the room catches the ring’s strange, swirling glints. She likes the ring. She wasn’t lying. She knows that Dr. Rush helped make it for her. She wonders if he knows that when she looks at it, she sees how materials can settle into being a thing that’s more than one thing. Not, perhaps, losing their distinctness, but coming together in a way that isn’t explosive or forced. She likes that. She’s always looking for it in nature. So she can think of herself as a natural thing. But she doesn’t know if it can happen on Earth. She’s afraid of Earth, a little.

“I will,” she says. “I will. Maybe.”

* * *

Two days later, she’s standing with Dr. Rush in the neural interface room.

“Are you _sure_ you should be doing this?” she says.

It’s four in the morning, and he’s bleary-eyed and shivering. He’s wearing Chloe’s Harvard sweatshirt. It’s too big on him. He looks like he should be in bed.

“Colonel Young knows I’m here,” he says absently. His eyes have gone vague, and the displays on the monitors are changing.

“He _does?_ ” Chloe asks dubiously.

“Well. He knows I’m not in bed. We have an agreement. I tell him I’m leaving, and he doesn’t ask where I’m going. Then, later, when he’s more awake, he upbraids me about it.”

“That sounds—“

“Like many things involving Colonel Young, it’s an unavoidable compromise.”

Chloe studies him. Neither one of them is talking about what they ought to be talking about. They haven’t been talking about it the whole night. They didn’t talk about it when Dr. Rush asked her to meet him here. They didn’t talk about it when he told her what he was asking her to do. They didn’t talk about it when she offered him her sweatshirt, when she helped him tug it on, when she took the excuse to pull him into a hug that only lasted maybe a half a second, not so long that he complained, but long enough for her to feel how unsteady his breath suddenly was. “I’m sorry,” he’d whispered, and she’d known why he was sorry. She’d known what he was apologizing for.

It’s none of her business, of course. The Colonel Young part. She’s never asked him about it. Not really. Though, in retrospect, she thinks that maybe sometimes when she hasn’t asked him about it, it’s been there in the conversations that they’ve had. About marriage. About fear. About transformation. How do I love someone, when I’m a monster? How do I live with someone without destroying them? What if I’m not sure how to be a person? What if I’m not sure what a person _is_? A very basic curriculum they were working out between them. An evolving heuristic they could apply to their own prodigiousness.

Now: “You know, I wish you had told me,” she says quietly, “that you weren’t going to be at my wedding.”

He goes tense all over. She supposes he thought he’d escaped this conversation. “Chloe— I can’t—“

“I wish you had told me because when you let someone believe something that’s not true— when you don’t tell them something because they won’t want to hear it— you’re letting them make this ghost-life in their head. Like— what it was going to be like to have you at my wedding. What that would look like. How that would feel. It’s like— it’s like— we make bodies for the future, when we think about it, and we feed them. There’s this flow of energy from ourselves. They’re like children. The more they grow, the more we’re sure we know what they’ll look like. The more we love them. So when— so when—“ Her voice cracks. “It’s better when it’s not really a body. When it’s not really formed, when it doesn’t have a face yet. You think it’s kinder not to tell people, but it isn’t kinder.”

Dr. Rush is staring at the floor, his fists clenched.

“I just thought you should know,” she says stoutly, lifting her chin. “That it isn’t kinder.”

“Chloe,” he says, his voice much softer. “I—“

She ignores him. “Are you ready for me to sit in the chair now?”

He looks at her. His expression is a little bit desperate, like there’s something that he wants to say to her, a question that he wants to ask, but he doesn’t know the right words, not in either of the languages they speak together.

She waits.

“Yes,” he says finally, lowering his eyes in defeat. “Yes, I’m ready.”

Chloe goes to the chair and drops squarely into it. She closes her eyes as the interface bolts engage.

* * *

It’s strange. Chloe’s never sure how she should feel about Ginn and Dr. Perry, the ghosts who took control of her body once. At the time, everyone expected her to be upset or frightened. But she wasn’t. She’d gotten so used to ghosts in her body by then. And she didn’t remember most of what had happened. It was more like for a while she just wasn’t there. Not so different from using the communication stones, except that she hadn’t agreed to it. For a while she didn’t want to talk to Dr. Rush or Eli, because she couldn’t shake a lingering sense that they weren’t talking to her— that when they looked at her, they were seeing someone she wasn’t. But in time she also got used to _that_ , because no one seemed to know who was supposed to be in her body. Who they were talking to. Who she was.

Sometimes she wonders if Ginn and Dr. Perry left traces inside her, like the Nakai did. She doesn’t tell Dr. Rush about this, because it would make him sad. He liked Dr. Perry. He wanted to love her, even though he couldn’t do it. Love doesn’t work like that. It’s not about willpower. It’s about the opposite of willpower. It’s a kind of surrender. A constant giving-up. Or just giving. Giving what the person you love would never ask you to give them. _Because_ they’d never ask you to give it to them.

Love is hard when you’ve had to surrender a lot already. Chloe knows that better than almost anyone else. Not better than Dr. Rush, she’s pretty sure. But there are times when it scares her that she loves someone. Because there are times when she wants to be the only one in control of her. When she panics and she can’t stand the thought of caring about another person, because it’s too much like being colonized. Not by Matt. By love. Like her own love is an alien force inside her body, threatening the tenuous walls she’s set up around herself.

She thinks about this as she waits anxiously in the white space of the interface. She catches herself turning and turning her engagement ring around her finger, a nervous habit she’s picked up. It helps remind her, maybe, who she is. It makes her feel like an ordinary person, or at the very least like a person who’s allowed to do ordinary things. Like get engaged. Like be loved. Like love.

That’s what she’s doing when an uncertain voice says, “Hello?”

Chloe turns around and sees Ginn: tall, thin, large-eyed, and over-delicate. She looks exactly like she did in real life, too pretty to have been a space mercenary. She’s always reminded Chloe a little of a deer.

“Hi,” Chloe says. “I don’t know if you remember me. I’m—“

“Chloe,” Ginn says. “Of course I remember. I stole your body.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

Ginn looks unconvinced. “You aren’t angry with me? You should be angry with me.”

“You weren’t the first one,” Chloe says. “And you weren’t the last.”

“What an extremely odd thing to say,” Ginn says. “You’re very matter-of-fact about it.”

“I don’t think it would help not to be.”

“It might make more sense, at least,” Ginn says. “Unless it’s been years and years since it happened. _Has_ it been years and years since it happened? You look just the same. Oh!” She points to Chloe’s hand. “Are you and Matt married?”

“We’re engaged,” Chloe says, twisting the ring again. “It hasn’t really been that long. Eight months.”

“Oh, good,” Ginn says. “Congratulations. I thought— I thought maybe I’d missed everything. I don’t know what I mean by that. Everything.” Abruptly, she looks around the white room they’re in. “Where are we, anyway?”

“We’re in the interface,” Chloe says. “I came to tell you that we’ve found a way to get you out of the computer.”

Ginn stares at her for a moment, brow furrowed, uncomprehending. “You found a body for me?”

“Dr. Rush figured out a way to tether your neural pattern to pure energy. You’ll be— well, you’ll effectively be ascended, but you’ll be able to retake physical form if you want.”

“Now?” Ginn asks, her face lighting up. “Can I do it now?”

“No,” Chloe says. “It’s going to be—“ She looks down. “I don’t know. We’re working on it. A few days.”

Ginn studies her. “You don’t seem happy.”

“It’s a long story,” Chloe says. She doesn’t want to talk about it. She doesn’t want to think about it. “Anyway, the main thing is that when it happens, you’ll need to go straight through the stargate. It’ll be active. It’ll take you back to Earth. You won’t have much time, so don’t bother trying to descend first. You can do that on the other side.”

“Will Eli be there?”

“Yes, of course. He’ll be waiting for you. I’ll be there too. If you need— you know—“ She smiles wanly. “Support.”

Ginn doesn’t smile back. “But not Dr. Rush.”

“What do you mean?”

“He said he wasn’t going to be there. He said that’s why he wanted you to talk to me.”

Chloe frowns at her, taken aback. “When did you talk to him?”

Now it’s Ginn’s turn to frown. “He’s the one who restarted my code and brought me here.”

Chloe stares. Then she turns and looks around the white space, as though Dr. Rush might be hiding in a corner, even though he _can’t_ be, because there _aren’t_ any corners, and anyway, she’s the one in the interface chair.

“Dr. Rush?” she says uncertainly. “Are you—“

“Yes, yes,” Dr. Rush says impatiently. “What is it?”

Chloe turns back to see him standing beside Ginn. Only he’s not Dr. Rush, or not quite; he looks… different. He’s wearing a crisp white buttoned shirt, and his hair is neatly trimmed, and he’s not so thin and sick and tired.

“Hi,” Chloe says. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, I _was_ talking to Dr. Franklin, before I was so rudely interrupted.”

“No, I mean…” She trails off, looking at him. Really looking. Thinking about what it means for him to look like this. “You’re,” she says slowly. “You’re the other you. The one who deleted the Nakai malware. The one that you make with the AI.”

Dr. Rush spreads his hands and shrugs, like a magician who’s just been caught doing a good trick.

“I thought you could only exist when Dr. Rush was joined with the ship.”

“Well, you know me,” he says, faux-casually.

Chloe sighs. “You made a workaround?”

“Don’t I always?”

She doesn’t say anything. She’s still gazing at him. “You seem…” she begins at last.

“Better?” he suggests.

“ _No_.” The vehemence in her voice surprises her. “It doesn’t work like that. You _know_ it doesn’t work like that. I wasn’t better before, and I’m not better now. I’m just different people. No. Not even different people. Just— different versions of myself. I’m not _better_ or _worse;_ I’m not more or less deserving of— of—“ She breaks off. “What would _you_ say to _me?_ If I said that? If I said I was _better?_ ”

He looks at her for a long moment. “I’d say,” he says gently, “that you deserve the right to decide who you want to be. Especially as it’s been so often taken from you in the past.”

For a minute she thinks she’s going to burst into tears. Angry tears, or sad, or frustrated, or tears because she doesn’t know what to do. “This isn’t _fair_ ,” she says.

“I find it generally isn’t. Though we work very hard to try and make it be.”

Chloe wipes a single tear away angrily. “Why are you being so _you?_ You’re supposed to be _not-_ you. Why aren’t you _not_ -you?”

Dr. Rush glances over at Ginn.

“He’s—“ Ginn says tentatively, darting a nervous look at him. “He’s running an iterative bit-rate reduction. Lossy. And self-modifying.”

“Oh,” Chloe whispers.

“Yes,” Dr. Rush says.

“So you’re going to try to—?”

“If I can.”

“And you’re doing this for him?“

“Yes. And—“ He looks away. “No. One can’t really— I don’t know where one draws the boundary, after a certain point.”

Chloe feels a tear spill down her cheek. “I’d like to—” she says in a small voice. “I’d like to talk to you. Can I talk to you? Alone?”

Dr. Rush turns to Ginn. “Are you prepared to go back? It won’t be for much longer.”

“I don’t mind,” Ginn says. “It’s like going to sleep. But when I wake up—“ She looks at Chloe. “You’ll be there? And Eli?”

Chloe manages a small smile. “Right on the other side of the gate.”

So Ginn sticks out her hand to Dr. Rush, and he takes it, and they walk into the distance, to a far-off point where they vanish from view.

Chloe folds her arms over her chest and sobs once, because she just feels— does it really matter what she feels? She’s allowed to cry. She’s allowed to cry, when so much has happened, and sometimes it seems like they’ll never get out from under the shadow of it, and sometimes it seems like they’ll never get out from under the shadow of what’s _about_ to happen, and that’s not what the future’s supposed to be like.

“Chloe,” Dr. Rush says in a pained voice. “Don’t cry.”

She scrubs her eyes and doesn’t turn to look at him. “I’m allowed to cry, you _asshole_.”

“I don’t like that kind of language.”

“You treat me like a little girl.”

He moves to stand in front of her, where she can’t avoid him. “I don’t,” he says quietly. “Or you wouldn’t be here. You were the only one I could trust.”

“You _don’t_ trust me,” she chokes out. “If you trusted me, you would have told me you weren’t going to be at my wedding. You wouldn’t have stopped the shuttle from leaving even though it meant you nearly _died_ —“

Dr. Rush sighs and rakes a hand through his hair. “He should have told you,” he murmurs.

“ _Yes._ ”

“But Chloe, sometimes— there are things we would like to say, and they get stopped in our mouths, because— Christ, I don’t know— because we don’t know the right words, or we never learned how to say them, or something happens, and the necessary muscles don’t work, and we _can’t_ ; do you understand? We can’t say them. No matter how much we want to. So instead we play the world’s most fucking inept game of Charades, trying to get the concepts across, and they don’t get across, but we _keep trying._ He was _trying._ ”

“You keep saying _he_ ,” Chloe says. “Why do you keep saying _he?_ ”

Dr. Rush looks away. “Perhaps I want to believe I would’ve made a different decision. I’m… if not _better_ than he is, better-adjusted, certainly. Better-dressed? Do you think?”

“Stop trying to make me smile,” she whispers.

He rests gentle eyes on her. “He didn't mean to hurt you. He was— _I_ was— trying to make you happy. He so wants you to be happy.”

Chloe says, her voice breaking, “But I want _you_ to be happy.”

He lifts a hand to touch her head in a strange gesture— a benediction, almost. For a long time he stands like that, looking at her without speaking. “You have so much potential,” he murmurs at last. “Not because you’re gifted. Because of the person you are. The person you’ve become. But you were wrong, you know. Sometimes people don’t make sacrifices because of— whatever it is you said— economy and power. They do it because you deserve it. Because your happiness matters to them. They do it for— a lot of different reasons. And you should never be made to feel guilty for that.”

“Neither should you,” she says fiercely, her eyes welling up.

He shuts his eyes briefly. “It’s too late for me.”

“It _isn’t_.” She wraps her arms around him, half-expecting him to pull away. But he doesn’t pull away, and maybe that’s part of who he is like this, that he isn’t so uncomfortable being touched, and how does she feel about that? Maybe she should dislike it. But it means that she can hug him in a way she’s never really been able to hug him, so she does. She hangs onto him like she’s trying to press all of her honesty into his body. “It’s never, never, never too late. And you _do_ deserve it. I know you don’t believe that, but you _do_. I won’t believe it unless you believe it.”

He laughs shakily against her shoulder. “Oh, Chloe, that’s a terrible bargain.”

“It’s true.”

She releases him and pulls back. “Please try,” she says. “Please. It’s going to be you?”

He nods jerkily and averts his gaze.

“Okay,” she say simply.

“You’re not disappointed?”

“What did you think I was going to say?”

“Some people,” he says quietly, “might argue, with good reason, that I’m less of a person. Or, at the very least, that I’m less of me.”

She looks at him for a long time. “What would _you_ say to _me?_ ” she asks him again. “If I said that?”

He gives her an unsteady smile. “I’ve already said what I’d say to you.”

“I won’t believe it unless you believe it.”

“Still a bad bargain,” he whispers, his smile wavering, “I’m afraid.”

“Well,” she says. “Maybe you should work on holding your half up.”

He looks down. “Maybe I should.”

There’s a long silence.

“Will I see you again?” Chloe asks. “Before—“

He shakes his head without speaking.

“And is he going to remember—“

He shakes his head again.

“Oh,” she says in a small voice.

He takes a deep breath. After a moment, he pushes his glasses up on his head and covers his eyes. “I’ll try,” he says in a raw voice. “I will try. And please know that even though I won’t be there, it doesn’t mean I won’t— _be_ there. If all goes as I hope. And even if I can’t— know how very badly I wanted to be. And that I—“ His mouth works soundlessly for a moment. “That I— want you to have a very happy life.”

Chloe wants to say the thing he couldn’t say. She wants to say it. But she’s too much of a coward. She just makes a sort of hurt, half-sobbing noise. “Me too,” she whispers. “I mean—“

“I know what you mean,” he says softly.

They look at each other for a moment.

“You should get back now,” he says. “I’ve spoken to the others. Really he wanted me to speak to _you_. But he didn’t think it through very well; he’s stretched out on the interface room floor, which is remarkably chilly. I would ask that you return him to his comfortable bed.”

“I will,” she says with a wan smile. “Do you want me to tell Colonel Young—“

He looks away quickly, but not quickly enough to hide a flash of pain. “I suppose you can tell him what you like,” he says. “No one’s stopping you.”

She studies him. “Okay,” she says quietly. “I understand.”

He waves his hand and a door appears in the blank white space. Beyond it is nothing but formless black.

“Off you go then,” he says with forced cheerfulness. “Back to the real world.”

Chloe heads towards the door. Right at its threshold, she pauses and looks back at him: a small neat figure against an expanse of light that looks like heaven, a child’s idea of what heaven is. He is watching her, straight-shouldered and wistful and wry-featured, and for a second it strikes her that she never got the chance to know him. Not this version of him, who wasn’t barely keeping his head above water, who wasn’t visibly on the verge of cracking in half. She would have liked to have known that version. She would have liked to have had that chance.

The full enormity of that loss comes down on her like a cartoon anvil, something that feels like it’s going to crush her flat, and she has to push her hands against her mouth so that she won’t make a noise. The stupid thing is that she doesn’t even know if it’s her loss that’s hit her, or if it’s _his_ loss that she suddenly can’t stand, or if it’s Colonel Young’s loss, or if it’s everyone; everyone who could have loved him, everyone whose love he’d deserved to have.

He raises his hand hesitantly to her, with a faint smile, and she raises her hand back. A salute from one maybe-person to another.

Then she’s through the door and back in the chair.

* * *

She wakes with tears on her cheeks and a familiar sense of far-off pain where the neural bolts had touched her head.

Dr. Rush is curled up on the floor, with her sweatshirt folded under his head as a pillow. She might have caught him taking a nap. He used to do that: fall asleep in the oddest places. Eli had put it in Destiny Bingo. That feels like centuries ago. What had the prize been? She can’t remember. She’d brought Dr. Rush to the ceremony. He’d sulked. Everyone else had laughed. At some point, Colonel Young had touched his arm and left his hand there. Chloe had thought, Oh, my God, surely not. But she’d been glad that Dr. Rush would let at least one person touch him. She thinks that human beings need to be touched. Or even people who aren’t quite human. The category of people who need to be touched is a bigger category than human.

Finally, Dr. Rush stirs a little.

Chloe climbs out of the chair and kneels next to him. She says softly, “Dr. Rush?”

He peers at her vaguely. “Chloe.”

“Time for you to get back to bed.”

“No; I have things to do, I—“

“Uh-uh,” she says, helping him to a seated position. “ _You_ told me to take you home.”

“Did I?” He scrubs at his face. “So it worked, then.”

“Yes. Yes, it worked.”

He leans against her shoulder as they stand. “I hope it was—“ he says, sounding cautious. “Helpful.”

Chloe closes her eyes. Her hand tightens on his arm. “You know what they say,” she whispers. “ _Est quod est.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Tegei deiceso plu tardo. Hoc vuenie._ = I'll tell you later. Come here.
> 
>  _Me penitet. Cella satis ne fuevam._ = I'm sorry. I wasn't fast enough.
> 
>  _Colpa towa ne fuevad._ = It wasn't your fault.
> 
>  _Ita fuevad._ = It _was_.
> 
>  _Nehil fuevad quod ted faciendom essed._ = There was nothing you could have done.
> 
>  _quam si guita towa ne pertenet, quam si nehil ne meret, et weros n’est_ = like your life doesn't matter, like it isn't worth anything, and it's not true.


	66. Chapter 66

“You’re supposed to be—“ Rush panted against Young’s mouth. “Fixing my mind, not—“

“I _am_ ,” Young mumbled.

Which was mostly true; he’d spent the better part of the last thirty minutes gently untangling and re-directing and germinating Rush’s mental threads, which had been left in a pretty piteous state by the whole planetary adventure, even after Rush was hooked back up to both Young and the ship. Now they were in somewhat better shape, though he thought he’d probably have to check on them later, and, of course, the older damage remained.

But in order to _do_ all of that, he’d kissed Rush, and kissing Rush was always pretty zero to sixty mph, and soon he’d been stretched out flat on the sofa with Rush on top of him, Rush’s t-shirt hiked up around his armpits and both their uniform jackets on the floor. So a lot of that work in Rush’s head had come with a physical counterpart; to wit: an extended make-out session that had left little bruised marks all down Rush’s neck. Now Young was somewhat ineffectually trying to get Rush’s pants open without having to sacrifice the pressure of Rush’s hips against his hips.

“Feels like you’re—“ Rush broke off to nudge Young’s head up so he could nuzzle at Young’s jawline. “Doing other things.”

“Do you want me to _stop_ doing other things?” Young asked, applying some strategic pressure.

“No— no, no— “ Rush _mm_ ed against Young’s throat. “But you’re— aren’t you going on shift?”

“Yeah. Soon,” Young said. “Fuck. Come back up here. I want to kiss you.”

He let his hands drift back up to Rush’s hips, then to the bare skin of Rush’s back, its perfect line between shoulder and buttock.

Rush arched into that touch with a lazy, satisfied sound. “Fuck going on shift,” he said. “Tell them you’re urgently needed elsewhere.”

“I’m urgently needed, am I?”

“Yes,” Rush said, leaning in and biting Young’s lower lip. “Very urgently.”

Young gave in for a little while longer, letting Rush kiss him into incoherence as his hands got more aggressive on Rush’s back, till they were both pretty much where they’d started, breathless and groping at each other restlessly, lips numb and swollen and wet.

Young groaned. “I have to go.”

“No. Unacceptable.”

“ _You’re_ unacceptable.”

Rush huffed. “Make sense.”

Young flicked Rush on the head. “I gotta go. Rain check. Until this evening.”

“Presumptuous,” Rush said, sounding disgruntled.

“Yeah, all right. _If_ you haven’t blown up the ship by this evening, or staged another mutiny, or abandoned me for a passionate affair with Volker—“

“Why would you even _say_ that?”

“—or gotten stuck in the FTL drive again, or picked one of your ten thousand nonsense reasons to be angry with me, then: rain check.” Young kissed him on the nose, which caused Rush’s face to collapse in disgust, and served as enough of a distraction that Young could push him off and sit up on the sofa. “Anyway, you’ve got stuff to do today, too. You’ve got to make an official statement to Wray about Telford.”

Rush tried to right his t-shirt, not very effectively. “I’m not making an official statement.”

“Yes, you are. I’m pressing charges.”

“Best of luck to you with that.”

Young sighed. “They’re going to dismiss the charges if I don’t have a corroborating account.”

“Was something about my previous response unclear?”

“Nick—“

Young reached for Rush’s arm, but Rush jerked it away. “He did nothing wrong,” Rush said in a low voice.

Young laughed incredulously. “I can’t believe you just said that. I mean, I _can_ , because it absolutely sounds like your brand of bizarro-world logic, but you’ve got to see that—“

“That _what?_ ” Rush turned a cold stare on Young. “That he assisted me in a plan to save the ship, at my own explicit request? That he did so knowing he risked this exact state of affairs?”

“He disobeyed a direct order!”

“You don’t give a damn about him disobeying orders.”

“That’s one of the charges. The other is assaulting a civilian,” Young said, his voice tightly controlled.

“A _civilian_ ,” Rush said, the tone of his voice, making it clear how ludicrous he found the idea. He had located his jacket, and was jerkily pulling it on, his shoulders hunched under the oversized fabric.

“You _are_ a civilian.”

“I knew what I was doing. Better than he did.”

“He _hurt_ you,” Young said. This time he couldn’t keep his voice so controlled.

“I hurt myself. It was a calculated decision, and one I don’t regret making.”

“God, you’re so fucking—“ Young began, and then broke off. He couldn’t think of a word to describe what Rush was, sitting there hunched and frozen and closed off against all emotion, saying, _It was a calculated decision._

“Oh, _what?_ ” Rush said, scathing. “What am I? Cold-hearted? Scheming? Remorseless? Yes. Manipulative? We’ve established that. I manipulated David into doing what I wanted, and you’re upset because part of the stratagem was sex, but—“

Young was shaking his head. “You are such a fucking liar.”

“Yes, that too. Are you done, or would you like to add further descriptors?” Rush was lacing his boots, his hands not entirely steady. He yanked the laces into a knot and stood.

“Where are you going?” Young asked, taken aback.

“Out.”

“You’re on medical leave.”

“Am I also under house arrest? Oh, no, that’s right: I’m a _civilian_. Incapable of wrongdoing.”

Young buried his face in his hands with a sound of frustration. “Why are you _doing_ this?”

Rush folded his arms across his chest. “Perhaps I think it’s only fair to remind you of what I’m like. Who I am.”

“I know who you are,” Young said, and lifted his head up. “That’s why I’m asking.”

Rush wouldn’t meet his eyes. He stared at the floor. “You _think_ you know,” he said.

“Nick—“

“You’re late for your shift.”

Rush turned towards the door.

//Nick,// Young said.

Rush didn’t respond. Young caught a flash of intense, unreadable anguish from him before he compressed his thoughts down into a dense, tangled swirl at the very bottom of his consciousness, in that place where Young could rarely manage to go.

//Talk to me.//

At his sides, Rush’s fists clenched and unclenched. He didn’t turn. “I have to go,” he said.

* * *

Unfortunately, one of the items on Young’s afternoon agenda was getting briefed by Scott on what Telford was planning to lay out as _his_ side of things. Scott had talked to Telford that morning, and when he stole a glance at Young and suggested that they should find someplace more private than the bridge, Young had a pretty good idea of what was coming.

“Um,” Scott said when the conference room door had closed behind them, trying to avoid looking at Young. “So Colonel Telford is suggesting that you’re unfit for command. Sir. From what I saw last time I was on Earth, General O’Neill’s not buying it, so you’re probably in not in any real danger, but— the reasons that Colonel Telford is laying out for his suggestion are not going to make you, uh, broadly popular.”

Young sighed and leaned against the wall. “Let me guess. Sleeping with a _male_ civilian attached to the mission. Allowing it to compromise my command decisions. Putting the safety of the ship at risk.”

“He also brought up your history with Lieutenant Johansen, but— obviously most people are going to have less of a problem with that.”

“Fantastic.”

“The DADT repeal technically doesn’t go through till September, and obviously no one’s going to— I mean, and we’re in space and all— but still—”

Young closed his eyes. “Yeah.”

“He said—“ Scott hesitated, ducking his head.

Young made a short gesture. “Let’s hear it. He’s probably said worse.”

“He said to tell you that so far his concern for his own standing has prevented him from sharing with the IOA that your decision to charge him might be personally motivated, since he and Dr. Rush were, uh—“ Scott cleared his throat. “At the time of the incident in question.”

Young shut his eyes. “Which they weren’t. But—“

“But it’s his word against yours. Unless Dr. Rush decides to give a statement.”

“Which he won’t. Fuck. _Fuck._ ” Young rubbed his temple tiredly.

“Like I said,” Scott said, sounding anxious, “I don’t think General O’Neill is buying any of this, but it’s not exactly going to—“

Whatever it wasn’t exactly going to, Young never found out.

Something happened in his mind that was—

like  
     walls  
            collapsing  
onto him it _hurt_ and  
                                                                       where was Rush?  
it hurt too much he could not  
hold himself together  
            and he was  
                                                                       where was Rush?  
                                                                                                           —someplace dark.  
                                                                                                           —someplace he could not follow.  
he wasn’t himself he was only  
     himself because                                         where was Rush?  
and it hurt and his head was spinning and then  
                                                                                                          Rush was  
hastily stepping into him and shoring up the walls, filling every absence in him and

they sucked in a gasp of air, the pain relenting, and they startled to find they were lying on the cold gray deck, dizzy and sick, as Scott on his radio said, “TJ? TJ, please respond,” and then again, after a moment, “TJ?” They groaned and shifted, getting their knees under them and sitting up, pressing a hand to their head, and they said, “I’m fine,”

and Young said, “I’m fine, and he said, //What the _fuck?_ //

//Sorry,// Rush said.

//Are you all right?//

//I’m fine. I was— briefly but intensively distracted.//

//What the fuck does that mean?//

//It doesn’t matter. It won’t happen again.//

//Rush—//

But Rush had tuned him out determinedly.

Scott looked worried. “Sir, TJ’s not answering her radio, but I really think you should get checked out.”

“I’m fine,” Young said, standing up with some effort. “It’s not me. It was Rush. What do you mean she’s not answering her radio?”

“I’m sure it’s nothing.”

Young took out his own radio. “TJ?” he said.

Nothing.

He tried again. “TJ, could you let me know you’re okay, please?”

After a moment, the radio crackled, and Chloe said, “She’s fine, Colonel. She wasn’t able to get to her radio. She’s here in the infirmary with me.”

Young frowned at the radio. “Why are you in the infirmary?”

“I’m not injured. Just visiting.”

“You’re visiting the _infirmary?_ ”

“Yes,” Chloe said.

Young looked up at Scott, who was frowning. “Do _you_ know anything about this?” Young said.

“No,” Scott said uncertainly. “I mean, it’s not that weird, right? They hang out sometimes."

“Yeah,” Young said, “it just feels— off. I think I’m going to head down there, just to make sure that everything’s okay.”

He tried to take a few steps, and found himself still lurching a little. Scott ended up supporting him out of the room, and down part of the hallway. “At least you’re going to the infirmary _anyway_ ,” Scott muttered. “Sir.”

Young shot him a wry look. “You know, Greer’s rubbing off on you.”

* * *

When they got to the infirmary, TJ was lying on a gurney with her eyes closed and her feet elevated. Chloe was sitting next to her, talking in a soft voice about something having to do with Ancient flower names.

“… and I think when they said _lirion_ , they weren’t actually talking about lilies; it may have been just any white flower, or else it doesn’t grow on Earth. So that doesn’t help much. _Iacinth_ is hyacinth, but I’ve never liked hyacinths much. They’re so bulky. Sort of tacky-looking.”

“Orchids are nice,” TJ said, her voice faint.

“I do like orchids a lot. At least for decoration. Although I wonder if it looks like you’re trying too hard to be upper-class. Like one of those little boutiques. They always have orchids. I don’t know the Ancient word for orchid; I’d have to ask—“

“What’s going on here?” Young asked mildly.

Chloe jumped, looking guilty. “Nothing,” she said. “TJ had a dizzy spell. She needed to lie down for a minute.”

“Right,” Young said. “Was this before or after she was fine, and just couldn’t get to her radio?”

Chloe hesitated.

“Chloe,” TJ whispered. “You can go. It’s all right.”

“But—“

“Everett’s about to get angry and make a fool of himself. The fewer people here, the fewer he has to apologize to later.”

Chloe lingered for a moment, looking doubtful. “You can radio me,” she said. “If you need me.”

“I will. And— for the record—“ TJ flashed her a weak smile. “I don’t think orchids look like you’re trying too hard.”

Chloe ducked her head and slipped away to Scott’s side.

Scott looked at her, and then at Young.

“Go,” Young said.

They went.

For a moment afterwards, Young stood there in silence.

“You haven’t called me Everett in a long time,” he said at last.

TJ said nothing.

“Care to tell me why I’m about to get angry?”

She shut her eyes. “You already know,” she whispered.

He did know. He’d been trying not to think about it. The timing. The coincidence.

“Rush,” he said.

He felt Rush’s startled attention swing towards him, like a microscope trying to fix him in its gaze. Young shoved him away so hard and so fast that it made his head hurt, and when Rush tried insistently to climb into his head again, Young pushed him back down under a sliver of a block. That made the headache worse, but he could handle it. What he couldn’t handle was Rush just fucking—

“What the hell did he do to you?” he asked levelly.

TJ still wasn’t looking at him. “He wanted to try something,” she said. “He can— _fix_ things, now. People, I mean, not just machines. He healed Greer on that planet.”

“So, what, you just let him waltz in here and fuck around with your fucking _body_?”

“Exactly! With _my_ fucking body!” she retorted, unexpectedly sharp. “Which means it’s none of your business!”

“It _is_ my business! Everything he does is my business! I _felt_ that in my fucking _head!_ He _always_ does this! I think it’s over, and then he goes and does this shit, and he seems to think it doesn’t affect anybody except for him. Like he’s the world’s first human island, or not even human, just—“ His voice cracked. “Just an _island_ , like nothing touches him. And if he doesn’t think about _me_ , then he sure as hell doesn’t think about _you_ , so forgive me for being a little bit fucking worried about what he _did_ to you, because I still—“

He broke off.

She was looking at him.

Young took a deep breath. “I care about you,” he said, awkwardly. “I do still care about you.”

“I know you do,” TJ whispered. “I’m glad you do.” She attempted a smile. “But I’m fine. He was really careful. He’s been— he’s been figuring out how to do it for a long time.”

“Figuring out how to—“ Young started, and then fell silent. “How to fix you,” he said hoarsely. “The ALS.”

She nodded without speaking.

“Did he? Did it work?”

“He thinks it did,” she said, in a small voice, almost inaudible.

Young looked at her for a long time.

A tear spilled down her cheek.

Then he was at the side of the gurney, grabbing her hand clumsily, kissing away the track of that tear with a fumbling, chaste kind of affection. “That’s good,” he managed to say. “That’s so good, TJ, I’m so— I’m so happy for you—“

“I didn’t want to tell anyone,” she said. “I don’t know for sure. I _won’t_ know for sure. But it’s a chance. It’s the same chance anyone gets. A chance to live.”

“Yeah,” he whispered. He was holding her hand tightly. “And you’re really sure you’re okay? He doesn’t— sometimes you don’t always know what he’s done. Not right away.”

“I’m okay. I think I’m okay.” She regarded him with tired, damp eyes. “Please don’t be angry with him. Not about this.”

“Oh, right, not about this. Just about the dozen or so other things he probably hasn’t told me, all of which are going to end up affecting me in a major, serious, personal way, on top of the dozen or so things I was _already_ angry at him about, and also, what the hell is he doing dragging _Chloe_ into his little schemes?”

TJ’s face did something complicated. Another tear made its long, wavering way down her cheek. She scrubbed at it. “She wanted to talk about flowers for her wedding. And he didn’t want—“ She paused, taking an unsteady breath. “He didn’t want me to be alone.”

“You shouldn’t be alone.”

“I’m not going to be. I radioed Varro. He’ll be here in a minute. He was finishing up some work with Greer.”

“Okay.” Young didn’t know what to say besides that.

“It _is_ okay,” TJ said softly. “It’s going to be okay.”

She was still crying. He didn’t know why she was still crying.

“I can stay,” Young said. “Until Varro gets here.”

She shook her head. “No. You should go talk to him. Please go talk to him.”

Young sighed. “TJ—“

“That’s what you can do for me,” she said quietly. “Go talk to him. Please.”

* * *

Young left the very thin block in place between himself and Rush as he headed to their quarters. He could feel how unhappy Rush was about it, and that Rush was, contrary to what Young had expected, actually _in_ their quarters, as opposed to sulking in the CI room or some far-flung part of the ship.

Just outside the door, Young hesitated and pulled the block back. Their minds slid together, and he was aware that Rush was stretched out flat on the couch, drowsily monitoring the shields, listening to the high-pitched chirp of their music, its endless and somewhat lonely modulation; thinking about how cold space was, how sound couldn’t propagate through it, how cold it was, cold, cold… Slowly Rush became aware of Young’s presence, with a sleepy wave of satisfaction that turned to something more skittish, colored by dread.

Young sighed and tipped his head back against the nearest bulkhead.

In front of him, the door slid tentatively open.

“I brought you food,” he said tiredly, as he pried himself off the wall. “In case you feel like being a human being and eating.” He tossed the MREs he’d grabbed from the infirmary supply onto the table as he walked in.

“I’m not a human being,” Rush said. He was still lying on the couch, watching Young with wary eyes.

“I’m aware of that,” Young said. “For instance, most human beings consider it bad manners to lie, go behind each other’s backs, pick fights about the consequences of lying and going behind each other’s backs, lie and go behind each other’s backs in the _middle_ of said fights, then knock each other unconscious and lie about the knocking-unconscious. To top it all off.”

Rush stared at the ceiling. “I suppose I should be _glad_ I’m not a human being, then.”

“Yeah,” Young said thinly. He’d been bent over, unlacing his boots; he pulled them off and hurled them in the direction of the bed. “Thanks for that penetrating account of your actions.”

“You asked for no such account.”

“I’ve had enough lies for today. Which, actually, is pretty impressive, because I’d increased my quota an awful lot.” He stripped off his jacket and threw it at the bed, too.

Rush didn’t say anything.

Young retrieved his reading glasses from the bedside table and consulted his datapad, checking the next day’s shifts. “It hurt,” he said conversationally. “By the way. If you’re interested.”

“I know,” Rush whispered.

Neither of them said anything else for a moment.

“I—“ Rush said, and stopped. He had turned his head, looking away from Young. “I had to devote all of my energy to Tamara for a moment. I couldn’t spare any to keep your mind intact.”

That gave Young pause. “So you’re saying that’s what I _should_ feel like?”

“It’s a difficult question,” Rush said in a barely-there voice.

Young frowned. “Are _you_ all right? You seem—“

“I’m fine.”

There was another silence.

Rush said at length, “I could have lived without the blocking.”

Young looked down. “Sorry,” he said. “I was— pretty angry.”

“Yes.”

“It didn’t help that it was TJ.”

“I presumed as much.”

“Or the thing with Telford.”

“No.”

“I really am sorry,” Young said. “It gives me a headache too.”

Rush didn’t say anything.

Instead, the AI appeared beside the door. “It does not give him a headache,” it said, sounding agitated. “It gives _you_ a headache. It makes _him_ too disorientated to even stand.”

“Go away!” Rush said loudly. “No one wants you here.”

It leveled a frustrated look at him and vanished.

Young sighed, taking his reading glasses off, and covered his face with his hands. “Is it telling the truth?”

Rush pushed his face into the couch.

“Can you not just—“ Young said with a sense of desperation. “Can you not even for _once_ — just for _once_ — just—“

“No,” Rush whispered.

“…No,” Young said heavily. “I guess not.”

He crossed the room and sat at the edge of the table, staring down at the MREs he’d brought. “Spaghetti and meatballs,” he said, trying to summon up some enthusiasm. “Cheese tortellini.”

“I told you. I’m not a human being.”

“Yeah. You know, I heard on the playground that if you say something three times, it makes it true."

“Fuck you.”

Young leaned over and picked Rush’s bare feet up so he could shift to the couch and sit beneath them. Rush made a disgruntled sound, but didn’t move.

“Are you still feeling sick,” Young asked eventually, “or cold, or just sulking?”

“None of the above.”

“So: sulking.”

“Fuck you. I don’t sulk.”

Young slid the cuffs of Rush’s pants up and idly traced the curve of one of his ankles. “Because you’re not a human being, right? Only a human being would do something so déclassé as sulking.”

Rush pushed his foot into Young’s hand. “Yes.”

“You’d probably still feel better if you ate something.”

“Fuck eating.”

Young let his hand trail up Rush’s leg. “Lots of f-bombs tonight. Is this a retaliatory strike? Or should I be—“

He was cut off by Rush sitting up and shifting to straddle his lap. “Fuck eating,” Rush repeated, nuzzling against Young’s jawline, his breath a warm shiver against Young’s skin. “You owe me.”

Young’s arms came up automatically to hold Rush against him. “Oh, yeah?” he said, a little taken aback. “I _owe_ you, huh?”

“Yes. Rain check.” Rush kissed him, his tongue pressing between Young’s lips in tentative, inquisitive bursts until Young gave up, exhaling sharply and half-rising off the couch to kiss him back open-mouthed.

They kissed like that for a long time, not urgently; oddly slow and delicate, but still intense. There was something cautious about it, like they still weren’t sure whether or not to be angry at each other, but pretty sure they didn’t want to be.

“Here,” Young said after a while, when he was breathless and starved for more contact; when the kiss had started to feel markedly less delicate. “Hold on, here, I want to get your shirt off.” He tugged at the hem of Rush’s t-shirt.

Rush lifted his arms mutely and let Young pull the shirt off of him. There was something about the motion that felt intimate, and Rush must have sensed it, because he crossed his arms over his chest for a minute, aware, maybe, of how he looked: thin and naked and a little bit vulnerable, Young’s dog tags resting on the white scar over his breastbone.

“Now you,” he said, his voice low. He reached out uncertainly and laid a hand on Young’s stomach, where Young’s shirt had ridden up above his waist.

“Yeah,” Young said softly. He stripped his shirt off. “Better?”

“Better,” Rush echoed, not looking at Young. He smoothed his hands up Young’s bare chest, making Young shiver, and then down Young’s arms, over the curve of his biceps. “You have an unnecessary amount of muscles,” he said, sounding faintly disapproving.

“You like it.”

“And hair.”

“I _know_ you like that.”

“No.” Rush ran the tip of one finger down the center of Young’s chest, where his very reasonable amount of body hair was thickest. Young held still under the touch. After a moment, Rush raised the same hand to Young’s head, resting it on his thick dark curls. “No,” he said again.

“You do,” Young said. “You like it. You like _me_.”

“I could never like someone with such a terrible tattoo.” Rush’s hand trailed down Young’s neck and touched the back of his shoulder, where he had a faded tattoo of his old Spec Ops unit’s emblem.

“Ah. I see. You don’t like me, but you _want_ me.”

“No,” Rush said. But his breath was undeniably short.

“You _want_ me,” Young said again. “This isn’t about me _owing_ you anything, you just want me.”

“No,” Rush whispered. He brought his hands up to Young’s face. “No; no—“

He kissed Young clumsily, their teeth clashing a little. He was shoving at Young, and it took Young a minute to figure out what he wanted and shift to stretch out length-wise against the sofa, letting Rush climb on top of him

“You can have what you want,” Young murmured, running his hands down Rush’s back.

Rush’s breath caught in his throat and he dropped his head to Young’s shoulder for a moment, so Young couldn’t see his expression. When he raised it again, he didn’t say anything. He kissed Young with a kind of whole-bodied absorption, twice as fiercely and urgently as before, forcing Young to work to meet him in that space where there were no words, just raw physical interaction, where they were pushing against each other mouth-to-mouth and skin-to-skin, their bare chests becoming damp with sweat in spite of Rush’s habitual coldness.

For the second time that day, Young found himself trying to get Rush’s pants open. This time he had more success, in spite of Rush’s unwillingness to move even an inch off of his body.

Young didn’t actually mind that unwillingness; nestled into the couch, with Rush weighing him down, both of them seemed really safe and really close. He could sense Rush’s arousal in his mind, like a dark smoky blanket that lay heavy over them, and he liked that too, and pushed the feeling of it at Rush— the experience of being held and cradled and compressed into this soft small space, where it was just and only the two of them, and Rush clenched his fists in Young’s hair so hard it hurt, making an unintelligible noise against his mouth and thrusting into his hand.

All the threads that made up Rush’s mind were clamorous with emotion, blazing and difficult to look at, but begging Young to look at them, so Young sent a slow flare of attention in their direction. _I’m here_ , he thought at them. _I’m here, I want you_.

Rush’s hands were all over Young’s body, raking the breathless skin of Young’s waist, and could skin be breathless? His skin _felt_ breathless, sensitized and aching for the relief of Rush’s touch, and when Rush got into the _real_ touching, touching with _intent_ , bringing damp fingertips to a nipple like he was snuffing a candle out, only it was the opposite of snuffing, it was like he could light flames with those fingertips— when he was gripping Young’s hipbones, and groping at his lower back, right at the swell of his ass, which for some reason made Young hard as hell— it seemed to turn Young _more_ breathless, all of him, his whole body.

Meanwhile, the threads of Rush’s mind were demanding and shrill; they wanted him to tangle himself in them; they wanted him to tie himself down and never leave them; they wanted him to be the ship, or they wanted to be the ship and him to be them; they _wanted him to be them_ , and he _was_ them, sort of, but they were frightened that he would go away, and _I want— I want—_ he said, he was holding them as tightly as he held onto Rush, holding onto Rush tighter in order to hold them tighter, digging the fingers of his free hand hard into Rush’s shoulder and gasping as the pain-pleasure of it fed back through him. He wanted or Rush wanted to be held _harder_ ; they were kissing panting and wet and vicious, without any grace, and both their flies were open, and someone’s hand was around them, and someone was scraping hot sharp hurting fingers down someone’s skin, and someone was making anguished noises of need on every thrust, and they were made of threads and they were made of bricks and glass and they were made of slick hot flesh that could never _quite_ merge but it was better that way, better, because they could feel like _this_ , right on the edge of release, so wholly fiercely and besottedly _here_ embodied and together, bright-hot and filled with emotion and fighting to give and give and give until they were giving up everything they had in huge gasping shudders that wracked and wracked and wracked them—

“God,” Rush whispered. “God, God—“ He was shaking in Young’s arms.

Young kissed his shoulder and kept kissing it.

They stayed tangled on the couch as their breath slowed.

It was a long time before Young pried one of his hands away from Rush’s back to softly touch his damp hair. “Hey,” he murmured.

Rush had his eyes shut. “Hello,” he whispered.

“Did I— I didn’t hurt you, did I? Or was that you, with the nails?”

“I don’t know.” Rush lifted his head vaguely and tried to look over his shoulder. “I think it was you.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He fitted his hand into Young’s hand, lacing their fingers together. In a move unusual for Rush, he projected a very thin, uncertain thread of what he was feeling, or at least one part of what he was feeling: a sense of physical wellbeing so overwhelming that it was loud even as that thin, uncertain thread.

“That’s good,” Young said softly.

“Mm.” Rush let his head drop back down to Young’s shoulder.

“I should get a blanket.”

“Mm,” Rush said again, sleepily.

But when Young tried to move out from under him, he frowned and said, “No.”

“You’ll want one in a minute. And I’m sticky.”

Rush huffed in frustration. “Oh, very well.”

He was mostly asleep by the time Young returned with one of the shiny mauve blankets. But he woke up and sat, looking endearingly muzzy-headed, so that Young could get on the couch and pull the blanket over them. Then he lay back against Young’s chest, a warm, comfortable weight, sketching unreadable patterns over Young’s skin with an idle finger.

“I like that,” Young said drowsily. “It’s— I don’t know. Restful.”

Rush fell asleep again a few minutes later, his hand slowing and coming to rest on Young’s shoulder. Young gazed at him through half-lidded eyes, full of an emotion he couldn’t name, something immense and almost ineffable, like a door inside him had opened to another dimension, where there was room to store a feeling so big. He hadn’t thought what he felt for Rush had room to expand. If he hadn’t been on the edge of sleep himself, he might have been a little shaken. But he was, and so he wasn’t, and he thought vaguely, I’ll work it out tomorrow.

He let his eyes drift closed, one hand cradling the nape of Rush’s neck.

* * *

_He dreams that they’re in the cabin, and Rush is playing the piano— a piece that Young has never heard before, one that’s halting and strangely-ornamented, mechanical and haunting, like something that might have come out of a music box. Young stands and listens and doesn’t understand it._

_“It’s for me,” he says uncertainly, when Rush is done, because he knows it is, although he doesn’t know how he knows this._

_Rush stares down at his folded hands and nods._

_“You can’t talk?”_

_Rush shakes his head and gestures towards the piano._

_“That was a message?”_

_Rush nods._

_“But it’s too complicated,” Young says, frowning. “It’s much too complicated. You can’t expect me to figure that out.”_

_Rush just sits there, slightly slumped, something sick in his expression._

_“I don’t even get a hint?”_

_He thinks for a second he will; Rush lifts a hand to the keyboard and touches one slow fingertip to it. But then Rush is rising, crossing the room to where Young stands in the doorway. As he passes Young, he pauses, just for an instant, and kisses Young softly on the cheek._

_“What was that for?” Young asks, bewildered. “Are you leaving? Why are you leaving?”_

_Rush doesn’t look back before he goes._

* * *

“Everett.”

Young wrinkled up his nose without opening his eyes. “What?” he said groggily.

“I’m leaving,” Rush whispered.

“Why?”

“There’s work I have to do.”

Young frowned into the couch cushion his face was pressed against. He reached out, fumbling blindly for Rush’s wrist. “No. Stay.”

“I’ll be back in a bit.”

Young groaned. “Fine. Please don’t do anything too fucked-up. Or anything that’s going to hurt.”

He felt the very faint press of Rush’s lips against his forehead before Rush pulled away from him.

* * *

When the door chime woke him, it was just before midnight. He started to tell whoever it was that they could come in, before he realized that he was shirtless, and his pants were still unfastened. He sighed and did up his fly and tried to locate his shirt. He had to settle for pulling his jacket on over his bare chest.

“Yeah,” he said tiredly, hitting the door controls and running an ineffectual hand through his hair. “What is it?”

Chloe was standing in the hallway. “Hi,” she said.

“Hi, Chloe. Nick’s not here. He’s off— doing whatever it is he does that he doesn’t want me to know about.”

It was something to do with relativistic physics, he could tell from his vague, abstracted sense of Rush’s mind.

Chloe said quietly, “I know he’s not here. I came to find _you._ I want to show you something.”

“Now?”

“Yes. Now.” Her voice was unexpectedly firm.

“…Okay,” Young said, feeling a little off-kilter. “I’m, uh.” He looked down. “Should I grab my shirt?”

“It’s late,” she said, with a ghost of a smile. “There’s no one around.”

He buttoned the jacket hastily and followed her out into the hall.

“That’s why we always work at night,” Chloe said after a moment had passed in silence. “Well. That’s not entirely true. I have trouble sleeping. He used to. He doesn’t anymore. But it was convenient. That there was no one around.”

A strange sense of dread was starting to unfold like a seed in Young’s stomach. “ _Work_ ,” he said. “What _work_ do you do with him?”

She let another long moment crawl by. They continued down the dimly lit hall.

“Weeks ago,” she said finally, “he came to me and asked me to help him.”

“To help him with _what_?”

“He asked me to keep it a secret. He wanted to design a program that would screen the cosmic background radiation along our projected trajectory. At first, we were looking for places where branes of the multiverse collided. Places where it was colliding. Gradually we were able to use that information to predict when and where collisions would occur.”

“Okay,” Young said. His sense of dread was growing.

“He was also working on a way to channel a massive influx of power from the solar collectors through the computer’s memory bank. It’s where their neural patterns are stored. Dr. Franklin, Dr. Perry, and Ginn. He’d— he’d already worked out how to power the gate, you see, so he didn’t need my help with that. Just with the other parts. Finding a collision was the main one. Once he knew how to do that, he could—“ Her voice faltered. She glanced at Young, then quickly looked away.

“Chloe—“ Young said.

“He’s already woken them up,” Chloe whispered. “Ginn and Dr. Perry and Dr. Franklin. He woke them up last night.”

Young stopped walking.

“Earlier tonight, he altered Destiny’s course.”

Young’s hand found the bulkhead. He stood there, not breathing, stock-still.

“I’m sorry,” Chloe said in a small voice. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know how long it’s going to be. Just that it’s going to be– “

“Soon,” Young said.

“Yes. I am—” She took a deep breath. “I am _so_ sorry. I should’ve— maybe if I’d—“

“There was nothing you could do,” Young said. 

“I should have _told_ you.”

“Would it have made a difference?”

She looked at him, unspeaking. Her eyes were very large and luminous. After a while, she shook her head.

Young didn’t say anything for a long time.

A tear spilled out of one of Chloe’s eyes. “I wanted him to come back to Earth,” she said, her voice cracking. “I still want him to come back. I think I thought— he’d figure out some way to do it. He always has a workaround. You know? I thought he’d come _back._ But he’s not going to.”

“No,” Young said.

He didn’t recognize his own voice.

“What are you going to do?”

He didn’t say anything.

After a moment of watching him, Chloe made a wretched noise and covered her eyes with her hands. “You _can’t_ ,” she said. She was crying now, really crying. “You’ll die. You’ll _die._ You can’t ascend. _Physiologically._ You _can’t_. Maybe, maybe, _maybe_ he makes it, but even if he _does_ , you’ll still—“

“Chloe,” he said.

“Please. _Please_ come back.”

He laid a hand on her shoulder. “It’s between me and him,” he said gently. “It’s nobody else’s business.”

“That’s not— that’s not _true._ ”

“Chloe,” he said again.

She sucked in a long, shaky breath. “Right. Right,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I’ll— I’ll show you what I was going to show you, and then…”

She didn’t seem to know what she’d wanted to say next.

He supposed there wasn’t an “and then.”

They walked through the silent halls, to an oddly remote part of the ship, until they arrived at a closed door.

Chloe keyed it open to reveal a room ablaze with information. Rush was standing in the center of the floor, midair displays floating around him in shades of electric blue and green and gold. Monitor banks along the walls were lit-up, their screens changing so fast that Young couldn’t even catch a glimpse of what they were tracking. The air was filled with a quiet hum of computer noise.

Rush didn’t seem to have noticed their presence. His eyes were vague and unfocused.

“This is _his_ control interface room,” Chloe said. “He’s, um— he won’t know we’re here. He’s not good at paying attention to his surroundings when he does this.”

“Yeah,” Young said quietly. He was watching Rush. Rush’s jacket was, as usual, unbuttoned. There was a faint line of bruises running up his neck where Young had put his mouth that morning. Young remembered the taste of his skin.

“What I wanted to show you is over here,” Chloe said.

He followed her to two adjacent viewscreens. Each of them was running lines of Ancient code, one in yellow and the other in blue.

“I set it up last night,” Chloe said. “After— The one in yellow is the AI, and the one in blue is him. It’s the code they’re running, in real time.”

“Okay,” Young said, not understanding. “So what am I supposed to be looking at?”

“You just have to watch,” Chloe said. “It might take a while.”

It took more than five minutes. The room seemed suspended in time. Rush, in his circle of displays and monitors, the artificial light flickering over him, seemed absent from real life, lost to the ship in a way that Young couldn’t identify or protect him against.

“There,” Chloe said suddenly, pointing to Rush’s monitor. “It’s about to—“

A single green line had appeared amidst the blue ones. At once, both monitors exploded in an avalanche of green code, racing across the screens, too fast to follow or try to interpret. At the back of Young’s mind, Rush’s presence dimmed and faltered.

“That’s—“ Young said, staring at the screens. “Is that—?”

“The combination,” Chloe said. “The one he makes with the AI. Keep watching.”

The screens continued running the shared green code for twenty seconds or so. Then they settled back into their blue and yellow divisions.

“I don’t understand,” Young said, frowning. “It can’t unmake _itself_.”

“Yes.” She looked at him. “It can. Now it can. It’s using creative firewalls to keep Dr. Rush and the AI separate.”

“ _Why?_ ”

She was still looking at him. “Can’t you guess?” she said softly.

Young shut his eyes.

“I think they’re both— pretty sure they know how you feel about the situation.”

“ _I’m_ not sure I know how I feel about the situation,” Young whispered. He stared at the bright code on the screens.

Chloe was silent for a long time.

Finally she said, “You should know that _he’s_ always the one who takes down the firewalls. _It’s_ always the one who puts them back up. So it’s— Anyway. That’s what it does. I thought you should know that. And you should know that—“ She hesitated.

Young glanced at her. “What?”

She said quietly, “It’s running a lossy iterative bit-rate reduction on itself.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It’s compressing down parts of the AI. It’s compressing them so that information is _lost_. It’s becoming more _him_. It wants to be _him._ ”

Young had to turn away from her. He couldn’t control his expression. “I know,” he said. “I know it does.”

After a moment, he heard her hesitant footsteps on the deck plates. Her small, cautious hand touched his hand. He let her lace her fingers in his and squeeze tightly.

“You should go to bed,” he said.

“Please come back to Earth,” she whispered, sounding anguished. “ _Please_.”

“Chloe.” He turned to face her. “You should go to bed.”

Slowly, she withdrew her hand. Young squeezed her fingertips as she did so.

“It’s all right,” he said gently. “I’m not mad at you. I just— need to be alone with him right now.”

She nodded silently and left the room.

For the next hour and a half, Young sat beside one of the monitor banks, watching Rush as he worked. There was very little outward sign of the masses of code that Rush was processing in his head, the quick-fire, electric jumpiness of his mind, the multiple tracks of branching, absorbed mathematical intuition that seemed to blossom and intersect in rhizomatic folds. Rush simply stood there, small and still, the frayed cuffs of his jacket drooping over his limp hands.

The changing light played across his face. He didn’t look human like this. But he still looked beautiful. It wasn’t a word that Young would usually apply to Rush. But he was. Beautiful. Young had seen it, and now he couldn’t not see it.

After a while, Rush’s thoughts returned, his focus shifting to his physical body. He shook his head slightly, as though trying to clear it.

“Chloe,” he said, “ _En destrod perimetrod conmithe, hod id?”_

Young said quietly, “I sent Chloe to bed.”

Rush startled, his thoughts lurching into something like panic. He backed away from Young, his hands coming up behind him to grip the edge of a monitor bank.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” Young said. “I’m not angry. Actually, I was always kind of curious to see where it was you went.”

Rush relaxed fractionally. He said, sounding resigned, “Chloe told you.”

“Yeah. For some reason she seemed to think it was important that I know you’re about to fly into a collision point and gate the crew home.”

Rush didn’t say anything.

“Were you going to tell me?” Young asked. His voice came out sounding casual. He didn’t understand how that was happening.

It took Rush a long time to answer, but at last he said with difficulty, “Yes. Eventually.”

“What’s going to happen to Destiny?”

“Destiny will be destroyed. It can’t withstand the energy of the collision.”

“And what about us?”

Rush was staring at the deck. His fists were clenched at his sides. “You’ll—“ he said unsteadily. “You’ll go back. And I’ll stay here.”

“Not happening.”

“You have to go back,” Rush whispered. “You’ll _die._ You can’t ascend.”

“I’m not going back without you.”

“You _have_ to,” Rush said, his voice ragged. “I know— I _know_ it seems impossible. I know it seems like you can’t—“ He struggled for a moment. “But you _will_. In time you’ll come to see that it wasn’t— that you didn’t—“

Young waited for him to finish the sentence.

Rush’s choked breath was hard to listen to in the silence.

“That I didn’t what?” Young asked quietly.

“It doesn’t matter,” Rush said almost inaudibly. “You have to go back.”

Young crossed the room to him. Rush looked trapped, like Young had backed him into a corner. His hands had returned to the edge of the monitor bank, as though it were the only thing keeping him from collapsing.

Young brought a hand to his face. “Nick,” he said softly. “I’m not leaving you alone.”

Rush made a muted, desperate sound. “Please don’t do this.”

“I was never going to do anything else,” Young said. “You know me. You’ve always known it was going to be you and me, at the end.”

Rush leaned forward and buried his face against Young’s shoulder. He was trembling. Slowly, Young’s arms came up around him, his palms flat against Rush’s back.

“Yes,” Rush whispered. “I know you.”


	67. Chapter 67

They went to tell Wray together. Young could have gone alone, and he thought that maybe Rush would have preferred it that way, but he didn’t want to let Rush out of his sight. It was an emotional urge, but also a practical one; Rush looked exhausted, and by the time they left his private little control interface room, he was shivering— full-on, whole-body shivers of the kind he rarely had to deal with anymore.

“I’d give you my jacket,” Young said as they waited for Wray to answer her door chime, “but I don’t have anything on under it.”

Rush managed a wan hint of a smirk. “Were you planning a surprise for me?”

“Chloe woke me up. I was still, uh.”

“Oh,” Rush said quietly. He looked away from Young.

“Nick—“ Young began, but he was interrupted by Wray’s appearance.

They had obviously gotten her out of bed; she was wearing sweatpants and a camisole, and she was blinking hazily in the light from the corridor. Even so, she frowned at them.

“You look terrible,” she said. “What’s happened?”

Young was about to respond, when an abrupt wave of dizziness made him aware that Rush was about to hit the floor.

“Could I, ah—“ Rush said faintly. “I’m very much afraid that I—“

Young caught him just as his knees started to buckle and towed him inside to Wray’s unmade bed. “Sorry about him,” he said over his shoulder to Wray. “Is there any chance you could grab a blanket?”

“How dare you apologize for me,” Rush said, sounding simultaneously annoyed and sick.

“Well, _someone_ ’s got to.” Young put a hand against Rush’s forehead, which was ice cold. //You absolute disaster,// he added, not bothering to hide his wave of fondness or the aura of worry around it. //Are you okay?//

//Yes, yes.// Rush had curled into a tight knot, his eyes shut. He was thinking very intensely about the microstructures of his mitochondria, and about the mechanisms of hydrogen atoms, and the arrow of time.

Young stroked his hair back. //Sure you are. After this we’re taking a break.//

Wray returned with the blanket, and helped Young wrap Rush in it. “I thought I told you earlier to go home and get some _sleep_ ,” she said to Rush severely.

“I did,” Rush murmured without opening his eyes.

Young sighed. “Would this be the hour-long nap you took after we…”

“Yes,” Rush said, sounding unrepentant.

Young glanced apologetically at Wray. “He’s a lot of work.”

“So I’ve heard,” she said with a faint smile. She sat on the edge of the bed.

“We didn’t come here to discuss my sleeping habits,” Rush said.

Young’s hand faltered just a little where he was still stroking Rush’s hair. “Yeah,” he said with difficulty. “Camile— we’re going to be gating back to Earth.”

She stared at him as though she didn’t understand what he’d said.

“You’ll need to organize the crew. Time is a factor, and it’s going to be a one-way trip.”

She was still staring at him. “I don’t understand,” she whispered. “What— when is this going to happen?”

“In about twelve hours,” Young said. His hand had come to rest, without conscious decision on his part, at Rush’s shoulder. Rush’s own hand crept up to tangle with it. “We’ll need to send someone through to Homeworld Command on the stones, to let them know we’ll be coming in.”

“I don’t understand,” Wray said again. “Why so soon? Why _now?_ The transfer of the Ancient database alone is going to take days, and—“

“It’s done,” Rush said without looking at her. “I started it weeks ago. Chloe and Eli both have copies on external hard drives.”

“But—“ Wray sounded bewildered. “Why didn’t you _say_ anything? You knew this was a possibility?”

Rush’s grip on Young’s hand was painfully tight. “Oh, you know me,” he said, sounding tired. “Secrets, secrets, secrets. Perhaps we can focus on the logistics of the next twelve hours, and save the rest for the inevitable investigation by Homeworld Command.”

//I always thought you were a terrible liar,// Young said. //I’m starting to reevaluate.//

//Have I said anything that isn’t true?//

Young didn’t answer.

“You know,” Wray said to Rush, mock-sternly, “this is all going to go in your personnel file.”

He made a dismissive sound. “See if you can find some new adjectives. I believe _uncommunicative_ is already on the list.”

She smiled at him. “I’ll do my best.”

There was a brief silence.

“Well,” she said. “I’d better get to work. Twelve hours isn’t a lot of time.”

“No,” Young said. “It’s not.”

* * *

Several hours later, Young lay in bed, his arms wrapped around Rush. Rush had been sleeping on and off, dreaming in fragments of nightmares too obscure and computational for Young to really understand, though he seemed to figure in some of them— once, unflatteringly, as malware wreaking havoc on Rush’s system.

Young had thought about taking the time to write a note to his family. Maybe to one of his brothers, at least. But he didn’t know what he’d say. He’d already slipped beyond the reach of their lives. Nothing he wrote would explain any more than the official letter of condolence. And nothing he wrote would approximate the truth— a truth they couldn’t understand, and would disbelieve if they heard it.

The truth was that he was happy. Not— maybe not happy in some larger way; somewhere in the multiverse there had to be an Everett Young who’d made it to Hawaii, and dozed on the beach while Rush complained about the sun; there was a Young who’d lived in a house with a piano in the parlor and did paperwork to the sound of bad-tempered chalk striking a board; there was a Young who’d driven Rush up to Wyoming just to show him the Milky Way, and had to listen to Rush gripe that he’d been in space for years and was tired of having to look at stars, and then probably kissed him to shut him up, right on the side of the highway, to soundtrack of night birds and insect noise.

But he wasn’t that Young. And in the possible range of _his_ universes, this was where he wanted to be: curled around Rush as though they parts of a set that came together, pieces cut to perfectly fit.

He smoothed his hand down Rush’s arm, and Rush stirred, lacing their fingers together.

“You’re supposed to be sleeping,” Young whispered.

“I am,” Rush said.

“No.”

“Well. You were thinking loudly.”

“You have a lot to do. You should rest.”

“I don’t think it matters,” Rush said. He was tracing his thumb over Young’s palm. “It’s mostly mechanized at this point. Chloe’s going to handle everything when we’re in proximity.”

“What about ascending?”

Rush didn’t say anything.

“Nick,” Young said, nuzzling at his neck insistently. “What about ascending?”

Rush didn’t say anything.

Young shut his eyes. “Are you even going to try?”

Rush was silent.

“I wish you would go back,” he whispered unsteadily at last.

“That’s not an answer.”

Rush’s hand tightened in Young’s. “I can’t do it like this,” he said. “Not like this. Not like _this_.”

He didn’t have to specify what he meant.

“Why _not?_ ” Young said miserably, his throat tight. “It’s not about perfection; it’s not about never having made mistakes. It’s about _acceptance_. It’s about being able to live with who you are.”

“Yes,” Rush said flatly. “I know.”

“So why—“

“You know why not.”

“ _God._ ” Young pulled Rush closer to him. “Is it _that_ hard-wired in you, can you really not imagine a kind of existence where you don’t _hate_ yourself? How long have you been _living_ like this, that you can’t even picture that world, that you’ve been to fucking galaxies four billion light-years from Earth with sentient air bugs and time travel and holes in the multiverse and still, still, the most alien fucking concept to you is that you _might not deserve to hurt?”_

“I—“ Rush’s voice failed. He swallowed. “I’m doing what I can.”

“By letting the AI make you into a different person?”

“He’s not a different person. He’s _me._ He’s _still me._ He’s the me who knows how to do that. What you want. I don’t understand why you don’t want him.”

“Because I want _you_ ,” Young said, his voice breaking. “And I don’t understand why that isn’t enough.”

Rush shifted in his arms, turning to face him. He threaded a hand through Young’s hair. “The thing is—” he murmured. “We’re not fixed points. We start in the same place, maybe, most of us, or near enough; but forces act on us from the first so that our trajectories diverge. Sometimes very small forces, so that, in the long run, most of us stay close to a well-trodden path, or we don’t wander so far away that we couldn’t find our way back there. But sometimes— for some of us— before we even know it— maybe we were just too fucking young, like those kids in fairy tales who get left out in the forest, or maybe— maybe we were _trying_ to get back, but we kept on fucking it up, and suddenly— before we realize it— we’re four billion light years away, and we’re _never going to make it,_ Everett; it’s _not going to happen_.”

Young closed his eyes.

After a while, he brought their mouths together, blindly and clumsily. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“I don’t _want_ you to be sorry,” Rush said. “I want you to accept that I have a chance to make it back. And it may not be the one you want; it may not look like what you think it should look like, but—“ He fell silent. “You like playing chess.”

“What?”

“You like playing chess. And I like not hurting. Or— hurting _less_. Both are artificial alterations. But they don’t unmake us. There’s more to us as people than that. Otherwise we would never be able to know each other. Because we will always change. We will always move forwards. Displaced with greater or lesser force. Given time.”

“Well,” Young said after a long silence. “We’ve only got six hours.”

Rush looked down. “Even so.”

Young traced his cheekbone with the edge of a thumb. “You don’t seem to really— have a handle on that. Time. I guess you never did.”

“It’s different,” Rush said. “For computers.”

Young considered saying, _You’re not a computer_. But it seemed too late for that. “Different how?” he asked.

“Think of a runner,” Rush said, “who wants to complete a mile. In order to do so, he must first complete a half-mile. And a half of that half-mile. And—“

“I’m familiar with the concept,” Young said. “I didn’t get your brain and not get supertasks.”

“Well. Sometimes you don’t think about what you know. It allows you to be remarkably dense at times.”

“Really? _That’s_ how you’re going to spend your six hours?”

“This is what I’m trying to tell you. That’s what time is like. Infinite and finite. Paradoxical. It stretches on forever, and yet it seems to always slip by. It’s— hard to navigate.”

“That sounds inconvenient.”

“It is.” Rush’s eyes had started to drift closed again. “I used to measure it by your heartbeats,” he murmured.

Young laughed quietly. “What?”

“Time. You have a very useful body.” He had brought his hand to rest over Young’s heart.

“Thanks?” Young laughed again. “I think.”

The door chimed, startling them both.

Rush made a dissatisfied noise.

Young sighed. “I’ll get it,” he said, sitting up. “I told you people were going to have questions. It’s probably Eli, or—“

It wasn’t Eli. It was Greer, and he had Telford with him.

Greer met Young’s eyes. “He wanted to talk to Rush,” he said, jerking his thumb back at Telford. “I told him it wasn’t happening, but he got pretty insistent. So I figured I’d let _you_ tell him instead.”

“I’m not sure Colonel Telford and I are supposed to interact with one another,” Young said levelly. “Given the whole impending trial.”

//Oh, just let him in,// Rush said.

//Talking to him is _not_ going to help you with the whole ascension thing.//

//What’s he going to do to me at this point?//

//I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out.//

//You can play chaperone if you like. I know how you enjoy righteous indignation.//

Young exhaled in irritation and rubbed his temple. “It’s fine, Greer. He can come in for a second.”

Greer looked wary, but his eyes flickered to a point behind Young. Rush must have given him a nod, because he stood aside.

“I’ll be outside if you need me, sir,” he said. “For _any_ reason.”

“Don’t worry,” Telford said to Young as the door hissed shut. “I’m not here to interrupt your romantic idyll. I just figured I’d give you the chance to explain to me rather than to an IOA review board why you’re deliberately plotting to take valuable weapons out of the hands of Earth.”

“You figured that out, did you?” Rush said, raising an eyebrow. He was sitting cross-legged on the bed. “I wondered if you would do.”

“The SGC needs this ship.”

“Well, you’re not going to have it, I’m afraid.”

Telford sat at the end of the bed, which made Young’s back tense. “We need _you_ , too, Nick,” he said in a carefully earnest voice. “Surely you must see that.”

“Sadly, I wouldn’t be very useful to you on Earth.”

“You think you wouldn’t live long, you mean. That’s not the same as not being useful. If we reverse-engineered this virus— if we figured out how to perfect it—“

“No,” Rush said.

“What do you mean, _no?_ ” Telford seemed genuinely incredulous. “This is what the whole project has always been _for_. The time and the money invested… the Icarus project… if we mastered ascension, we could control _galaxies_.”

“Interesting,” Rush murmured. “And who is _we,_ I wonder?”

“The SGC, of course,” Telford said, after a half-beat. “And you could be _part_ of that.”

“But also dead,” Young interjected.

“Stay out of this, Everett,” Telford snapped, turning on him. Young hadn’t realized he was so close to losing his temper. Possibly the thought that _he_  might be blamed for the loss of the ship was putting him on edge.

Young said, “I’m just pointing out the facts. We all know you’re only interested in him as a _weapon_. And a dead weapon’s not much use, is it?”

“Oh, like anyone even expected him to make it this far in the first place,” Telford said curtly. “Keeping him from offing himself was a full-time job. A job and a half. They should have paid me overtime.”

“And what would that have made you?” Young said nastily. “If you got paid for that kind of overtime?”

“Don’t,” Rush said in a tight, quiet voice.

But Telford was already biting out, “Well, I _wasn’t_ , Everett, so fuck you very much! I was getting _nothing_ for it, and _Nick_ here walked away with all my work, so maybe you should ask what that makes _him_ , if you’re so set on the question—

“He _walked away with your work?_ He barely _walked away!_ But then, it was such a _chore_ to keep him alive, you’d probably have preferred if he didn’t—”

“God, you really are the worst kind of scientific philistine, aren’t you?” Telford hissed. “The whole _point_ was to keep him alive. Which is what I’m _still doing_ , by the way; what do you think is going to happen if he stays here? You think he’s going to ascend? _Nick?_ Don’t make me laugh.”

“As opposed to dying on Earth?”

“At least I’m offering him a _chance_. What are _you_ doing? You’re wearing a goddamn uniform, Everett. How do you think the SGC’s going to feel when you come back without their warship _and_ without Rush? That’ll be a great cherry on top of the story I have to tell.”

“Actually,” Rush cut in deliberately, “I don’t think you’re going to be telling any stories, David.” His voice was disquietingly mild. “I think you’re going to be very nice.”

At some point during the argument, his mind had pulled away from Young, going unreadably shuttered and compressed.

Telford’s whole body stilled.

“I know you _can_ be nice," Rush continued in the same mild tone. "Can’t you, David?”

//?// Young asked, but got no reply.

Telford tilted his head, giving Rush a dangerous look. “And tell me why would I do that?”

“Sergeant Greer was good enough to assist me in recording a, shall we say, detailed formal statement about the events relating to Colonel Young’s charges. I don’t see any reason that statement should ever become public. I think it would be best to just let the whole affair come to an end. But if you should feel the need to make noise, then, well, Sergeant Greer has my permission to add to that cacophony. As it were.” Rush was inspecting the nails of one hand, not looking at Telford.

Telford stared at him for a long moment. Then, unexpectedly, he laughed. “You dirty little street rat. I shouldn’t have forgotten. It never really leaves you, does it?”

“No. I suppose it doesn’t,” Rush said.

“It’s a good move, Nick. I’m impressed.”

“I can’t tell you how much your approval means.”

“They’re still going to bring him down over the ship, you realize. But I suppose that’s not your problem. You'll be well out of it by then. As usual. You’re sure I can’t—“

Rush said, “You’ve said your piece. Unless you have any new and astonishing revelations to share, I think it’s time for you to leave.”

“Fine. Consider me outplayed. For the time being.” But Telford stood for a moment longer, looking at him. “I’ll miss you, Nick. I really will. You know I only ever wanted the best for you, right?”

Rush stared down at his hands, now loosely folded in his lap. “I know,” he said. “I know you did.”

* * *

When Telford had gone, Young crossed to the bed and sat in silence.

“I’m sending him through in one of the first groups,” he said at last. “I don’t trust him not to try and pull some kind of stunt.”

“Probably wise,” Rush said. “He does excel at stunts.”

He hadn’t moved since Telford left.

“Thank you,” Young said. “For making the statement.”

“It’s not what you wanted.”

“Still. I’d rather not have him trashing my reputation, even posthumously.”

Rush didn’t say anything.

Young shifted tentatively on the bed. “Is it okay if I—“

“It’s your bed.”

It wasn’t, really. But Young climbed back up to where Rush was sitting and lay down. “Nick,” he said finally. “You know that what he said isn’t—“

“Don’t,” Rush whispered. “Please don’t.”

He turned and curled up in Young’s arms, pushing against him in that way he had, like he could push right through him if he tried hard enough, like he _was_ trying, and it was Young’s job to make him stop, to mark the boundary of his body so he didn’t slip free entirely, to hold him steady so he could rest inside his own skin.

* * *

Young planned his route to the gateroom, that afternoon, to take him past the infirmary.

TJ was busy, of course, packing samples. She was humming softly to herself under her breath. The light glinted off her hair, and it occurred to Young that he would never see this light glint off her hair again, something he had taken for granted a thousand times— that this was the last time he would stand and watch her working in this room.

So he stayed there in the doorway for a moment, watching.

Eventually she turned and caught sight of him.

“Hi,” he said softly.

“Hi,” she said.

They looked at each other in silence.

He could tell by the wetness in her eyes that she knew. He should have known that she would know, because they’d always shared that intuition. He’d never been able to lie to her.

“What’s going to happen to you?” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“But you’re— this is what you want?”

“Yes,” he said.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes,” he said again.

She nodded and looked away. “I’m glad,” she said, her voice breaking. “That you found what you wanted. But I’ll miss you.”

He said quietly, “I’m glad, too. I hope you—“

She had to duck her head, because she was crying. “I hope so too,” she managed. “I think— I think I will.”

He nodded. “Good,” he said in a barely-there voice. “That’s good.”

“I have to finish packing,” she said, and then laughed, wiping away tears, as though realizing the ridiculousness of the whole situation; how terribly, heartbreakingly ridiculous it was.

Young smiled back at her. “I know,” he said. “I’ll see you in the gateroom.”

He felt her watching him as he left.

He made it a few corridors away and then had to stop, leaning against the wall with his eyes closed.

“Everett,” Sheppard’s voice said.

Sheppard was barefoot and rumpled and unhappy, sitting cross-legged on the floor in the middle of the hall.

“You look pretty glum,” Young said, “considering you’re getting what you wanted.”

“I am not getting what I wanted,” the AI whispered. “I want what he wants.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“ _Please_. _Please_ go.”

Young tried to move past it, but it stood and trailed him.

“It will be _easier_ for him if you go,” it said desperately.

“It’s not just about him.”

“There is a life for you on Earth.”

“You don’t know anything about it.”

“You think you cannot live without him, but you _can_.”

He turned and looked it square in the eyes. “Hypocrite,” he said flatly.

It flickered miserably. “Everett—” it said.

He turned away.

* * *

Rush was standing in the center of the gateroom when Young entered, frowning abstractedly at the wide circle of the gate. He glanced over at Young without greeting him, his brow furrowed.

“Are we about ready to go?” Young asked.

Rush looked at Eli, Brody, and Volker, who were manning the monitors. Eli pulled out his radio.

“Hey, Chloe,” he said. “Is everything good on your end?”

“Yes. I’m ready,” she said, sounding tense.

The ship dropped out of FTL with a lurch.

“The obelisk planet is dead ahead,” Chloe’s voice said over the radio. “I’m shutting off sublight and letting it pull us in.”

“Okay,” Eli said. “Lisa, can you lower the collectors? We’re going to start dialing.”

“Right,” Park said. “Collectors are down.”

Eli turned to Brody. “Dial it up.”

At the back of his mind, Young could feel Rush lowering the firewall that separated him from the AI. His thoughts grew vast and distant, highly structured, coalescing into strange and beautiful cities from their usually chaotic mass.

The gate begin to spin.

The flow of energy through Rush’s head had its own kind of music, very different to that of the shields, a call and answer of need and satiation, demand and fulfillment, a feeling like thirst being quenched. Young could sense the moment at which every part was arranged with its partner, achieving harmony.

The event horizon flowered to life.

For a moment Rush’s mind resonated with an enormous musical satisfaction that diminished into nothing as the firewall dropped back down.

The science team stood silently looking at the gate.

“I guess—“ Eli said uncertainly. “I guess I didn’t think it was going to work.”

“Send our GDO frequency,” Young said.

A moment later, General O’Neill’s voice came over the radio channel. “Everett, is that you?"

“Yes, sir.”

“Nice work,” O’Neill said. “We’ve got the gateroom prepped for hot arrivals. You can start sending your people through.”

The room around Young was still silent.

“Well,” Young said, “you heard him.”

“We’re ready for the first group.” Eli said into the radio.

Rush was hugging his arms over his chest. “I’ll be on the bridge,” he said abruptly, turning on his heel and heading for the door.

Young sighed. //You know people are going to want to—//

//No.//

//Yeah, okay. I get it. I’ll see you when this is all over.//

//Yes. When it’s all over,// Rush said.

* * *

Telford didn’t go through in the very first group, which would have been Young’s preference, but he went through in the second, with James and Atienza flanking him. He scanned the gateroom as he entered, obviously looking for Rush before his eyes came to rest on Young.

“What,” he said, stopping in front of him as he got close, “I don’t get to say goodbye?”

“You already said your goodbye,” Young said shortly.

“I’m flattered by your lack of trust in me. But I believe I admitted defeat.”

“You’ve never struck me as the admitting-defeat type.”

Telford laughed. “You’ve got a lot to learn, Everett. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

Young raised an eyebrow. “Sorry for what?”

“Whatever it is he’s going to do. However it is he’s going to fuck you over."

“I’ll tell him you said that,” Young said mildly. “I’m sure _he’ll_ be flattered by your lack of trust in _him_.”

Telford looked over at the stargate, where the liquid blue of the wormhole was waiting. His expression was unreadable. “Have you ever heard the story about the scorpion and the frog?”

“I don’t need your bullshit fables,” Young said.

“Suit yourself.”

“He’s not a scorpion.”

“He can’t help it,” Telford said, almost conversationally. He hefted his bag on his shoulder. “The really successful scorpions never can.”

He turned to go. “I’ll see you on the other side,” he called, without looking back. “If you make it.”

Young watched him walk through the event horizon and disappear.

* * *

All the nonessential personnel had been evac’ed when Greer showed up and joined Young against the back wall, where Young was leaning and watching equipment going through.

“So,” Greer said. “Where is he?”

“On the bridge,” Young said. “This isn’t really his kind of scene.”

“Yeah. I guess I can see that.”

They both stood there without speaking, watching the pale light from the wormhole cast strange moving shadows on the floor.

“It really does look like water,” Greer said. “I never thought about that.”

Young glanced at him. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess.”

Off to the side, TJ and Varro had entered, carting their duffels with them.

Something about the sight of TJ caused Greer to straighten. Maybe he just figured that Young would want some privacy with her. Young didn’t; he thought that if he were going to break down, that would probably be the point at which it happened. But when Greer said, “I’m going to go get the cargo set up,” Young let him go without comment.

TJ stopped in front of him, setting her bag down on the deck.

They looked at each other without speaking.

“I don’t know what to say,” she whispered after a moment had passed.

“I guess it’s a pretty unique social situation,” Young said with difficulty.

She laughed, her eyes bright. “You could say that.”

Then she was stepping forward and they were crushed against each other, his arms wrapped tightly around her and his face buried at her neck as he inhaled the scent of her skin and of her hair, which always managed to smell sun-touched, even in the depths of space, where no sun was ever shining.

“I love you,” he whispered. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” she said in a wavering voice. “Me too.”

“I was so lucky to have you with me.”

“Be happy, Everett,” she breathed against him.

Then she turned, and lifted her bag, and she was gone.

* * *

After a while he crossed the room to stand next to Wray, who was checking off names on a clipboard.

‘Who’s left?” he asked.

“Just you, me, Greer, Scott, and the science team,” she said. “And Rush, of course.” She had the faint furrow to her brow that spoke of determined concentration. To her this was a bureaucratic effort, nothing more; in a few months, she’d no doubt be coordinating meet-ups for everyone on Earth. She was probably imagining it already. Imagining that Young and Rush would be there.

Behind Wray, Volker and Brody were preparing to go through. They were bickering amiably about something having to do with food— what they were going to eat when they got back to Earth, it sounded like.

“Are you serious?” Brody said. “How could you go with anything but ’za? You’re a traitor to the scientific community.”

“Please don’t call it that,” Volker said.

“’Za?”

“It sounds some kind of Goa’uld delicacy. Probably with larvae in it. And they’re not going to deliver pizza to you in quarantine.”

“Why not? They can have a guy in a hazmat suit bring it in.”

“Do you even know how quarantine _works?_ ”

Young stopped them. “Good luck, guys.”

They gazed at him doubtfully.

“What’s going to happen with you?” Volker asked. "I mean— with you and Rush?" He was the first one who had raised the question.

“Rush and me worked something out,” Young said. “Don’t worry about it.”

They stole a quick look at each other, like they weren’t entirely convinced.

“Guys,” Young said. “It’s going to be fine.”

“Right,” Brody said. “Just like always.”

“Just like always,” Young said.

* * *

Scott, Park, and Eli showed up together.

“Lisa and me are the spares,” Scott said in a long-suffering tone. “I told Chloe I wasn’t leaving without her, but—“

“Right,” Young said.

“I think she wants to be the last one to go. Other than you, obviously.”

“She’s going to have to fight Ron for it,” Park said. She exchanged a weary glance with Scott.

“At least they’re together,” Scott said. “I guess that’s better?”

Young said, “I’ll make sure they get home.”

“I know,” Scott said. “I know you will.”

There was a pause.

“I mean,” he said, not quite looking at Young, “you’ll be right behind them. Won’t you?”

There was something in his expression that made him look like a little boy. Maybe the way his eyebrows drew together slightly, suggesting anxiousness.

“Yeah,” Young said, his throat tight. “Of course. It’s not that easy to get rid of me.”

Scott didn’t say anything.

“I’m a spare, too,” Eli said, interrupting the long and difficult silence. “I’m, like, a _permanent_ spare. Just wait till we get back to Earth, and I don’t have to be the odd one out. Ginn’s going to be there, and I’m going to make everyone go on couple’s dates, or, you know, whatever it is that couples do. Even Brody and Volker, who aren’t really a couple, but also they kind of are.”

“Eli,” Scott said, turning to him in exasperation. “Why would you put that in my head?”

Eli shrugged. “I don’t know, man. Tell me I’m wrong. They’re probably going to, like, die on the same day after sharing a lab all their lives.”

He sounded casual, but Young thought the lightheartedness was calculated. He looked like he’d been crying in the recent past. Young met his eyes for a fraction of a second, but didn’t comment.

“Go on, get out of here,” he said. “I’ll see you guys on the other side.”

So they went, and now it was only Wray and Young in the gateroom.

They stood there in silence for a while.

“You should go ahead and go through,” Young said at last. “I’ll send Greer and Chloe along when they get here.”

Wray didn’t say anything.

Then, abruptly, she turned to Young. He saw that her bottom lip was trembling. “Was it obvious—” she said, trying to steady her voice and not entirely succeeding, “was it really that obvious to everyone else that Rush wasn’t coming back?”

Young looked at her. He didn’t know what to say.

“They’re all so worried about you,” she said, scraping a hand across her eyes. “They’re worried about _you_. Not him.”

Young studied the deck. “To be fair,” he said quietly, “I’m pretty sure Scott knew because of Chloe.”

She nodded shortly, pressing her mouth into a tight line. “So he’s not—“

“No. He can’t.”

She turned her head away for a second, her hair falling forward to obscure her face. Then she drew a deep breath and turned back. “You too?” she asked simply.

“Yeah,” he said softly.

She nodded again. “Good,” she said. “That’s good. If it’s what you want.”

“It’s what I want.”

“I’m surprised he let you stay.”

“It wasn’t his choice,” Young said.

She attempted a smile. “Somehow that never seems to stop him.”

“Well, we all have to learn to compromise someday.” He cleared his throat. He wanted to change the subject. “Sorry to stick you with the fallout from all this. You’ll explain to the SGC?”

“Well,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll think of something.”

For some reason Young couldn’t not smile at that, and then _she_ was smiling, really smiling, and then she was laughing, a choked wet laugh, and he was laughing too.

“I’m sure you will,” he said. “I’m sure you will think of something.”

She hugged him gently. “Good luck,” she whispered.

“Thanks, Camile.”

“I’ll be thinking of you.”

She picked up her bag. At the very lip of the gate, she hesitated and turned to look at him.

He raised a hand, not quite a wave, and she returned the gesture before vanishing through the horizon.

* * *

It was hard to be in the gateroom alone.

Something in the quiet seemed to weigh on him uneasily.

Eventually he grabbed his radio. “Greer,” he said. “You want to bring them on down here?”

It didn’t take long before Greer showed up with Rush and Chloe in tow.

Chloe had obviously been crying, but wasn’t any longer. She seemed to have reached some place of calm beyond the need to cry. Rush had his hand resting gingerly on her shoulder, which was very near to the maximum amount of emotion that Rush usually showed.

“I’m staying,” Greer said determinedly, in a tone that made it clear this was an ongoing point of contention. “I’m staying right up until the end.”

“You’re _not_ ,” Rush returned. “The gate could become unstable; there could be fluctuations in spacetime; any number of things could happen. And if I don’t return you in pristine condition, Dr. Park will find a way to dial Destiny and have my skin.”

“ _Any number of things could happen_ is exactly my point,” Greer said meaningfully. “You might end up needing an extra pair of hands.”

“No,” Rush said.

“Are you _sure?_ ” Greer gave Rush a long, curiously intent look.

“Yes. I’m very sure. As we've already discussed.”

They seemed to be having a conversation underneath their conversation, but it was one that Young couldn’t follow. //?// he sent to Rush.

//Nothing,// Rush said. //I loathe displays of emotion and I want to get him out of here.//

Greer sighed. “Fine,” he said. “So this is where we’re gonna do the whole goodbye thing?”

He looked like he wasn’t over-fond of displays of emotion, either.

“Yes,” Rush said, staring at the deck. “I suppose it is.”

They were both silent for a while, to the point that Young thought he was going to have to step in and tell them to hug.

Then Greer said abruptly, “I don’t know how much you remember about what happened on that planet.”

“Some of it,” Rush said, without looking up. “I remember some of it.”

“We said a lot of shit down there. There were some times I didn’t think you were going to keep going. But that’s what we do, right? We keep going. Not just cause we have to. We don’t have to. We could quit anytime. But we don’t. Cause we deserve more than that shit.”

Rush didn’t say anything.

“Anyway,” Greer said. “That’s my big piece of life wisdom. Just for you. Free of charge.”

He headed towards the gate.

“Greer,” Rush said in a low voice.

Greer turned.

Rush’s mouth worked for a moment. “I hope—“ he said unsteadily. “I hope you—“

Greer studied him. “Yeah,” he said gently, when it became clear that Rush wasn’t going to finish the sentence. “You too, Doc.”

He saluted Young from just outside the event horizon, and then he, too, was gone.

Chloe, Rush, and Young stood gazing into the blue-white gate without speaking.

“You should go,” Rush said at last, jerking his head towards Chloe without actually looking at her. His eyes were still fixed on the deck. “There’s nothing to say.”

“I know,” she whispered. Her breath caught. “Everything and nothing. That’s always the problem.”

“Remember what I told you.”

In a small voice, she said, “I will.”

“And— and—“ Rush was visibly struggling for composure.

“I will,” Chloe choked out. “I will.”

She went to him. They were standing very close together, not quite touching, face-to-face, and then she leaned forward and they _were_ touching, just barely, her forehead resting against his forehead.

“Chloe—” he whispered. Just her name.

“I will,” she said softly. “I always will.”

Then she was turning and running through the gate, so that she couldn’t look back, or because she could only make herself do it at high speed, and for the last time Young saw her pale face, childish but haunted, slightly frightened and not quite hopeful, but with a very determined set. Maybe, he thought, she was running not to get away from what she couldn’t stand to look at, but because she was running forward into the future. He didn’t know if it was true, but he wanted to believe it.

* * *

Rush was awash in desolation. Somewhere in his weather, a terrible flood was rising up, choppy and dark gray, like the seas off the coasts of Scotland, which he had never found picturesque, only places to drown. The sky seemed to offer no absolution. Everything was part of the same color, the same cold world.

Young stepped towards him and touched his arm. “Hey,” he said softly. “She’s going to be fine.”

“I know she is,” Rush murmured.

“She’s going to have a great life.”

“Yes.”

“So what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

Something within him seemed to have frozen into a hard, determined shell. Very thin and brittle, with nothing inside it. Young sent an uncertain current of warmth towards him, and Rush flinched.

“Don’t,” he said unsteadily. “It’s— I’m— still managing the data transfer; it’s very— distracting for me—“

“Oh,” Young said, slightly taken aback. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I’m just— finding it difficult to—“

He pulled away from Young, but not before Young realized that one of the reasons he couldn’t get the words out was that he was shivering— abruptly shivering so hard that he couldn’t stay upright.

“Nick—“ Young said.

“It’s nothing.”

“Do you want me to—“

“No; it’s already— fine. I’m fine.”

He didn’t look fine.

“I thought you were supposed to be better at this by now,” Young chastised him gently.

“Yes,” Rush said almost inaudibly. “I’m supposed to be better at this.”

“We should go grab you a blanket or something. Maybe someone left behind a jacket. There’s no reason to stick around here, right?”

Rush shook his head haltingly. He was staring at the open wormhole, but he didn’t really seem to be seeing it. “In approximately two hundred and fifty thousand kilometers,” he said quietly, “spacetime will begin to warp. Our phase will begin to fluctuate. Incoming energy will begin to destabilize the structural integrity of the circuitry.”

“Okay,” Young said. “That’s— soon?”

Rush nodded without speaking.

“So we should go.”

“Yes.” But Rush was still staring at the wormhole. The cool silvery light of it played across his features, and Young saw uneasily what Greer had meant— everyone _knew_ that the event horizon looked like water. They even called it a puddle, for God’s sake. It was one of those things you thought about once and then dismissed, maybe because the comparison went no deeper than that. But here, in the hollow dark room, Rush looked like he was underwater, very far down in the black depths of an airless sea.

“Everett,” Rush whispered. “Please go back. Please.”

“I’ve already told you,” Young said. “I won’t. I can’t.”

“There’s nothing— there’s not _anything_ I could say to—?“

“It’s not about you. This is where I want to be.”

Rush shut his eyes.

“I know you don’t understand that,” Young said. “So I’m glad you’re still— I don’t know. Respecting it, I guess. You could have just made a forcefield and pushed me through the gate.”

In an almost nonexistent voice, Rush said, “Please believe me when I say I’m acutely aware of the importance of agency, having been stripped of my own in so many ways.”

“Yeah,” Young said quietly. “I wasn’t— ever really sure how much you knew that.”

“It’s possible for a person to know. And not know.”

“I guess it would have to be.”

Young could tell that Rush was still intensely unhappy. His thoughts had gone obscure and strange, nosing like alien fish through the remote abyss that Rush was in, navigating by senses Young didn’t have. The only clear current was an unrelenting anguish that seemed to bleed from some invisible source without end.

“Nick,” Young said softly. “Tell me what’s wrong. I don’t want you to go into it like this. Into the whole— you know what I mean. I want you to try. Really try. If it’s me—“

Rush shook his head.

“Good. Because I’m happy. I am. I really am. I don’t think— I don’t think I knew how to _be_ happy before. Not really. That’s why— I mean— you can’t go back. You know? From that kind of happiness. You can’t turn your back on it.”

Rush didn’t say anything.

“So what is it?” Young asked.

“I think,” Rush said in the same skeletal voice, “it’s just that things aren’t quite right in my head. Trying to manage so much energy— converging with and diverging from the AI— it’s caused a certain amount of confusion. Perhaps— perhaps you could undertake some repairs.”

“Yeah, of course.” Young frowned at him. “You know, if all you wanted was to kiss me, you didn’t need to make up an excuse.”

Rush managed a faint, painful-looking smile. “I’m sure that would help as well.”

So Young rested his hands at the back of Rush’s neck and gently pulled him closer.

Rush was still unnaturally cold, but the inside of his mouth was warmer, and Young breathed a sound of satisfaction into it as Rush’s lips parted and he kissed into that warm place. He tasted a faint hint of salt, the metallic trace of tears.

As their minds drew near, Rush's grief rose up like a stormcloud, bruised-black and swollen with guilt and remorse.

//Shh,// Young said, slightly alarmed, kissing him urgent and soft and anxious to comfort.

And that was when he felt the needle go into his arm.

It was well-placed, in the deltoid, where he was all muscle. An unnecessary amount of muscles.

Strong, Rush had murmured once. Very strong.

Instinct had Young shoving back and yanking the syringe out before conscious thought could kick in— but still too late.

Too late.

He watched it clatter, empty, to the gateroom deck.

He looked up at Rush stupidly. “But I trusted you,” he said.

“You shouldn’t have,” Rush whispered.

“But you said—“

“I said nothing that wasn’t true.”

“You—“

Young’s knees buckled, and Rush stepped in to catch him as he collapsed, dizzy and numb-limbed.

“—Bastard,” Rush finished the sentence unsteadily. “Cold-hearted, scheming, remorseless, manipulative— yes.”

Young was thinking about— he was remembering—

Behind him, Rush’s whole body flinched. “Yes,” he said, wretched. “I warned you. I told you. I _am_ the scorpion. David always knew.”

“No,” Young choked out. “ _No_."

Rush was dragging him towards the gate.

The silver-bright coin of the gate, so much like the surface of water.

“If you thought I would let you _die_ here—“ Rush said. “If you thought for a _moment_ that I would _ever_ let you stay and _die_ — then you were the one who never knew me.”

Young couldn’t make his mouth form words. //I _did_ ,// he thought with an intensity of despair that he thought was going to tear him apart. //I _did_. Nick, please. Please don’t do this.//

“I _have_ to.”

// _No._ //

“I want you to _live_.” Rush was barely able to speak. “I know it’s hard. I _know_ it is. But it’s not—“ His breath hitched. “It’s not so hard that you can’t _live_.”

//Please. _Please_ don’t do this.//

“I’ll try to let you know if I— if I make it.”

With a preternatural calm, Young realized that they had reached the gate.

He shut his eyes. //Please,// he said.

“You’ll be all right,” Rush said, his voice breaking. “You’ll see. You’ll, you’ll wake up one morning and you’ll— you won’t, you’ll realize that you don’t, that you don’t—“

//I won’t,// Young said, anguished. //I _can’t_.//

“You _will._ ”

//No. No. Nick. Listen. There are some things that don't change. You know. You _know_ there are. There are things you can't come back from; you told me yourself, and you think only things that hurt are like that, but it isn't true—//

Rush’s hands on him were shaking. “Forget me,” he said. “Don’t think about me. Bury what’s left of me in your head.”

//There are things that can _not hurt_ and never go away and it _won’t_ go away, ever; you can't erase it _;_ I _always,_ I _always will_ —// Young was starting to lose consciousness. // _Please_ ,// he said weakly. //Please don’t do this. I won’t forgive you. I won’t. I’ll never forgive you.//

“I know you won’t,” Rush whispered, and pushed him through the gate.

 


	68. Brittle Star

For a long time Rush stands in front of the open gate.

The ship is dark. He is cold.

He should not be cold. Now, at last, there is no reason not for him to take the energy that Destiny has tried to pour into him for weeks. Without the structures Young had put in place against it, it floods throughout his body. Why does he always think of it as water? Because Young had thought of it as water, perhaps. Young had always had an absurd and irrationally concrete way of approaching the subatomic.

Already, Rush takes the time to note, events are shifting into the past tense.

He should not be cold because the energy from the ship is sufficient for the demands of thermoregulation. It structures his thoughts and renders him rational, or as rational as he gets; it compensates for the lack of sleep and the persistent drain of trying to order particles, atoms, molecules into discrete objects and linear timelines; it prevents him from feeling the severed endings in his brain where, until recently, he had been a part of something larger than himself. It is both powerful and effective as a panacea. He should not be cold. He should not feel sick.

And in every way that counts, of course, he feels—

Better.

“Nick,” the AI says softly from behind him.

“Yes,” he says without turning around.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, sweetheart.”

“Nick.”

“Yes?”

It whispers, “I am not all right.”

“Yes. I know,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

The CPU is running at maximum capacity. Algorithms loop and loop. The AI is trying to be Jackson, but cannot keep hold of its body; every so often the shadow of Gloria appears. The lights overhead flicker, though the gate stays steady: a liquid mirror that reflects nothing back at the room.

“Do not be sorry,” the AI says wretchedly. “Please do not be sorry.”

For a moment, it is Gloria again.

Rush walks to the monitor bank and reaches underneath it to find the stack of papers he had cached there the previous morning, tied together with a neatly-knotted bootlace. Within the stack are a number of documents he has prepared. A letter of recommendation detailing Eli’s work aboard Destiny. An endorsement of commendation for Greer. A personal message to the head of Berkeley’s mathematics department, detailing Chloe’s work on the Banach-Tarski paradox and asking him to ensure that she gains admission to the graduate program of her choice.

He stares down at the knot of the bootlace. He remembers tying it. The weight of the lace in his shaky hands. Even then he had not been sure what he would do with the papers. He knew there was a chance that he would let them go up in ash. Not to go up in ash. That is— someone else’s thinking. Be consumed and rendered radiation. The laborious ballpoint scrawl of the words, the energy transferred by the push of pen against paper, the silent moments over the past month that he spent composing them. Better, he thinks, for it all to be obliterated. Better to let it go unsent. Let him be erased all at once, as though he’d never existed.

“Nick,” the AI says, its voice wavering. “This is the next task in your queue. Why are you not completing it?”

“I’m not certain that I should,” Rush whispers. "I don't think I should send them."

“But you worked so hard. You devoted a great deal of time to their composition.”

“Yes, but—“

He is struggling to make himself speak.

His demands on Destiny have spiked precipitously. He is requiring a great deal of energy to function in the most basic sense.

The AI studies him. “You believe,” it says uncertainly, “that these inputs will cause sadness?”

“Yes. No. Sadness is—“ He has to break off and take a breath. “Associated with a lack of happiness.”

“I _know_ that,” the AI says, frowning. “I am not a child.”

“But there are also other kinds of sadness. The sadness of a happiness one knows one will someday lack. The sadness of a happiness displaced so far from its source that by the time one is happy, there is no possibility of further happiness. Like the light from a star that has already experienced supernova, or a radio transmission from a ship that has been destroyed.”

The AI looks down. “For a long time,” it says in a small voice, “I received updates from Discenna. Even after I knew that everyone in Discenna must be dead.”

“The taxonomy of sadness,” Rush whispers, “is… very sizable.”

The AI hunches its shoulders. “Yes,” it says. “But Nick— I wish that you would please send the letters.”

Rush doesn’t say anything.

“Please send them,” the AI says. “Please. I believe—“ It breaks off. Its projection flickers. “I also believe that Chloe should go to graduate school.”

He laughs at that, but it isn’t really a laugh. It’s only a strained and awful noise.

He holds the packet of papers to his chest as though it could shield him from an onslaught that feels external but comes from within. An inner pain so intense he thinks for a moment that he would like to cut his chest open and pull the pain out. Because it can’t possibly be _him_ , that pain. It can’t be part of his body. No organism in nature would inflict this on itself. It wouldn’t survive.

“Nick,” the AI says desperately. “You cannot hurt so much. Please. You must stop hurting. You will create a feedback loop that overloads the CPU.”

“I know,” he says with effort. “I’m sorry.”

“You did your best. You were bound by parameters that could not be altered. It is not your fault. It was already written into your code. In spite of this, you ensured many optimal outcomes. You performed admirably.”

“Yes,” Rush says thickly. “Yes. I always perform very admirably.”

The reminder forces him forwards in halting steps across the deck. This is who he is. This is how he keeps going. He does not cut his chest open. His chest has in fact _been_ cut open, and when it was, he made a hole inside of himself for the pain, as he always does. He _did_ survive. He _does_ survive. And maybe some important parts have been lost in those incavations; maybe he is riddled with holes by now, less a man than a fucking ghost. But there is enough of him left to dig one more hole out of. There always is; there always, _always_ is.

He pushes the bundle of papers through the stargate.

There is nothing among those papers for Young.

What would he say? What could he possibly say?

He had thought he would send—

His hand is clenched around the cheap metal chain at his neck.

“He wanted them back,” he says quietly, anguished. “If he made it to Earth.”

And abruptly he is digging so deep into himself that the knife scrapes out bone from his ribcage, but he must keep cutting, he must, he _must_ , because there is _so much more pain_ , and if it doesn’t fit inside him, then _where is it going to go,_ and the answer is that it is going to go into the CPU and overload the CPU and the lights in the gateroom are going to flicker and he is going to be on the floor and he is going to be curled on the floor with his hand clutching a cheap fucking military fucking metal chain and he is not going to be able to get up because it is _not_ _possible_ for him to do this because it is _not possible_ for him to do this to Young because it is _not possible_ for him to do this to Young and survive because _no organism in nature_ would and there are natural laws there are parameters that _can’t be altered_ and so he _cannot_ do this and—

“Nick.” The AI is a nothingness of static. “Nick. Nick. Please do not cry. _Please_. I do not think you should send Colonel Young’s dog tags back. He gave them to you. He wanted you to have them. He wanted you to hold on to them. _Please_ , Nick.”

It tries to touch him, but its hand passes through his body.

Because there is not enough left to touch, he thinks.

“Please do not cry,” it says wretchedly. “I wish that you would not cry.”

“I’m not crying,” he whispers.

“Yes, you are.”

“No.”

“You are making a processing error.” It is also crying.

He shuts his eyes and presses his face to the deck.

He lies like that for an increment of time that Destiny measures for him because now there is no other way for him to measure time and gradually, gradually the breaths stop shuddering out of his chest and gradually, gradually he is capable of moving his physical body and gradually, gradually the pain fits inside of it and the CPU can execute ordinary operations.

And he can sit.

And he can scrub a hand across his eyes.

“Yes,” he says unsteadily. “All right. I’m ready.”

The AI, solid now and wearing Jackson’s look of worry, is sitting cross-legged across from him.

“Are you sure?” it asks. “You are ready to be together?”

“Yes,” Rush says. He looks at it. “Are _you_ ready?”

It bites its lip. “Nick,” it says.

“What?”

“We will be better?"

“Yes.”

“Colonel Young did not think so.”

“Colonel Young didn’t—“ Rush manages, his throat aching. “He didn’t understand.”

"He loves you," the AI says, agonized. "He  _loves_ you."

"Yes," Rush whispers. "I know."

“But he will not think you are _you_ anymore.”

“No,” Rush says. His voice collapses halfway through the single word, and he has to take several measured breaths. “No. I don't think he will.”

"So he will not—"

"No."

“If you leave me here and ascend without me, he will still love you.”

Rush says inaudibly, "I can't."

“You don’t know that.” It flickers miserably. “You could _try_. Please. I wish that you would please try.“

“Even if I could,” Rush says, “I would never leave you. You must know that. Never.”

“Nick.” It is crying again.

“What?” he asks it gently.

“I also love you. Not like he did. But I love you.”

Its projection is shaky and mutable. It is Jackson, tears blurring his glasses, and it is Gloria, cheeks blotchy and eyes red-rimmed, and it is Young’s Colonel Sheppard, hair falling in his face, shoulders hunched, and finally, perhaps inevitably, it is Young: a new entry in the taxonomy of sadness: the happiness the AI most wishes it could give to him, the happiness Rush most wishes he could have.

“I know,” Rush says softly. He lifts his hand to Young’s face as though he could touch it, perhaps pretending that it is his choice not to run his fingers through the dark halating curls of Young’s hair. “I know. Likewise.”

For the space of half a breath he stands like that. Time stretches, infinite and finite.

He takes down the firewall separating them.

Destiny—

does not unmake him; it does not piece him to nothing; it fills and fills and fills him until he is overfilled, until the weak always so weak and half-shattered seams of him dissolve under its pressure and for a brief moment that stretches boundless and impassable in subdivisions of surplus and grief, for that brief moment, it is everything that he is: his whole being, burning out every synapse in him lightning-quick, and it is choking on the gray-green river water of Glasgow and it is ducking under the fingernail shards of a shattering water glass and it is shifting restless under the weight of David’s body, under the press of David’s lips at the back of his neck, already feeling trapped, the tone of his voice, the things he’d murmured, and it is writhing weakly underneath David’s hands in the water-not-water always the water always the water and _I know you Nick I know you_ he’d said and it is waking in some white infirmary, mind suddenly inchoate and electric and it is waking in the infirmary with Everett inexplicably holding its hand and it is waking in a glass tank, skin screaming at the touch of the water, and it is screaming as the Nakai cut open its chest and it wants to cut open its chest to tear the suffering out and it is pushing its face against Everett’s shoulder as he says _You’re okay, I got you_ , and it is pushing its face against Everett’s warm neck as it wakes drowsy and soft-edged and warm and held safely and it is pushing its face against Gloria’s wood-and-rosin-smelling hair and it is watching her hair fray out in fine bright tendrils against the bleak backdrop of the beach at Aldeburgh, and it is bending down to pick up the music with a bootprint across the _con forza_ and it is breaking through the hard alien glass to pull Chloe out of the water and it is holding tightly to Chloe’s hand as she says _That’s the hardest part I think_ , and it is lacing its fingers in Everett’s fingers and it is touching the keys of the piano for the first time and for the last time and it is throwing its childish body against a door and there is blood in its teeth and David slaps it across the face and it is shuddering on the bathroom floor and a fly is buzzing at the window and the radio the radio and water is rising around its feet and _We don’t sit down and die in the dark_ Greer says and snow in the mountains and the AI gives it a gold star and the _molto sostenuto_ and stars like neurons dying in short bright falls and make a wish make a wish Nick I wish you would please but it can’t it can’t ever the boundaries the parameters the water the immobilizing sea through which it moves the sea when it touched the gray-white shingle and _Not everything is a fight you have to win_ she said and the snow is static and the shuttle is dying and they show it Gloria dying and it cannot breathe it cannot scream David pushes it under the water and it can’t fight the fingerprint bruises the mark the missing tooth the music the scars from the neural bolts at its head the stars falling a bowl of marbles marshmallows blood bitumen prime numbers Petershill Drive just breathe in a red blanket silver chain around its neck nuclear weapon just say yes Nick I know you want to tell me how much you want it It’s not a game It’s not kinder I’m fucked-up aren’t I Oh darling yes but just a little bit It’s no use pretending you’re not broken I don’t understand why that’s not enough and it’s never     ever       ever       ever       ever       ever        ever        ever       ever     ever     ever     ever   Ever—

* * *

Someone is playing the piano.

He opens his eyes.

He is—

Nicholas Rush.

And he is not Nicholas Rush.

And he is more Nicholas Rush than he has ever been.

He remembers not remembering himself.

He remembers not having a body.

He touches his fingers to his lips.

He can taste salt on them.

He remembers crying.

He remembers saying, _Please don’t cry._

But already that memory is gone. Like the memories of Atlantis, of his daughter, of his unmaking, of the Nakai. Of sitting with Everett in a darkened infirmary, of wanting so badly to be Nick. Soon he will remember only that he remembered. In the back of his mind, the iterative bit-rate reduction runs and runs, compressing down everything that is not now himself, erasing its data to make room for him. Eventually there will be only the abiding structure and, perhaps, an ineradicable sense of love.

He closes his eyes.

The sound of the piano stops whispering out of Destiny’s comm system.

His time is very limited. This material existence is not sustainable. The strain of the CPU has already all but destroyed his physical mind.

In passing, he wonders how far the iterative bit-rate reduction will be able to progress before there is no more time left for it to run. Who will he be, at the point it ceases? He will be, of course, as he has always been, Nicholas Rush. But perhaps if it runs long enough, perhaps, perhaps—

No. He does not think that the running of an iterative bit-rate reduction, to whatever extent, will make any difference to Young.

The pain is more bearable now. In this self-variation. But even so, it is almost too much.

He takes several measured, unsteady breaths, flattening his hands against the deck.

Afterwards, he forces himself to stand.

He is the ship and he is in the ship, though the parts of him that are the ship are fading. He moves throughout his own body, and all the doors come open for him.

Already he is channeling energy through the computer, through the locked place in the interface where the neural patterns of Ginn, Dr. Franklin, and Dr. Perry are stored. It is simple, in his current state, to run the program, though the circuitry of the ship is beginning to fritz.

There is one task remaining for him to complete.

It makes no difference, of course, where he does this. He had thought of the observation deck, though the tear in the multiverse will not be visible, except perhaps through its effects on light.

Instead he finds himself walking towards Young’s quarters.

Inside them, everything is still. The room is exactly as he and Young had left it. Extra blankets still lie rumpled on the bed. There is an indentation in the pillows where their heads had rested; Young’s reading glasses on the nightstand. Young will need new ones on Earth. He had left a book splayed on the table. Presumably, he knows how it ends.

Rush sits down at the edge of the bed. Then, as though he has no other option, as though the motion is dictated by physical law, he curls up in the spot where he is used to sleeping. He imagines it is still warm, although it is not.

He is not sure if this will help or hurt his chance of ascension.

It is not, after all, about love.

Jackson had said it was about a pacifying of the self. Acceptance.  _Est quod est._

But he doesn’t think it is. He think it’s an insistence, not a surrender. _I want to live_. Not out of some evolutionary reaction, a basic, programmed refusal for the last nerves in the body to not twitch. Not because he owes it to someone. Not to fucking show them, not because to fucking surrender now would be to give up, to fucking submit. Not because of some attachment to the self. He has never demonstrated any particular attachment to himself. He has been many selves. He has been a ship. He has been a shuttle. He has been a doctor. He has been the AI. He has been so many variations of Nicholas Rush that he loses count.

He has been a child who suffered, and who learned not to suffer by feeding the mouth of suffering with everything he had. He has been a husband who was so unable to levee the flow of his adoration that he sometimes feared he would be erased by it. He has been a plaything, a weapon, a pet, a resource; he has been an enemy, starving for the experience of power in his hands. He has been cared for. He has been coveted. He has been a traitor. He has been an animal in a trap. He has been thirty percent of himself, and ninety, and ninety-five percent; he has been and will be more than that. He has never been whole, not in the sense that Young means it, and now he never will be. So perhaps what he must accept, in the end, is that he cannot give Young what Young had wanted.

He presses his face into the pillow. He is aware that the cloth beneath his cheek is damp.

Still. Still. He wants to live.

_Why?_

Is life good? In his experience, it isn’t.

But he has been a ship. And he has been a shuttle. He has been an AI who had so shattered its own selfhood that it barely knew how to exist. He has been a doctor who had loved and lost his only child. He has watched the two moons setting over Atlantis. He has lain in the snow-packed darkness holding Everett’s hand, and seen meteors flash in the sky above the mountains. He has kissed the back of Gloria’s neck as she was weeping on the bathroom linoleum and felt such a surge of love that he was afraid he’d die when she did. He has been human and he has been Ancient and he has been neither. He has flown through stars and he has listened to ionized particles striking the shields. He has been torn apart and he has been put back together and he has had to figure out how to be what he is after it. He has had to figure out how to be Nicholas Rush. And he has had to figure out how to be Nicholas Rush. And he has had to figure out how to be Nicholas Rush again. So many times. In so many places.

That's— who he is.

He does not know if he deserves ascension. But there is so much in him that deserves to persist. So much that shouldn’t be lost. And life stretches on in front of him: not good, but rich with what is as-yet-cohering, and _that_ is good, and he wants to be part of it.

“I do,” he whispers as he starts his final conversion, focusing beyond the point-like particles that human physics can grasp, reaching out to his own vibrational states and beginning to change their energy. “I do. I want that. I want to live.”

He shuts his eyes as spacetime begins to collapse around him.

The strange light of elemental collision pours in.


	69. Chapter 69

The first time Young came back to consciousness, there was nothing but agony.

* * *

His mind felt like it’d been torn apart.

In a way, he supposed it had.

* * *

He could hear traffic in the distance.

And birds singing.

So he knew he was on Earth.

* * *

“No,” Chloe said, somewhere nearby. “If you do that, you’ll be in check.”

“Where?” Matt asked.

“See?”

The click of plastic pieces against a chessboard.

Matt sighed. “I really don’t think I’m getting better.”

“You will,” Chloe said.

* * *

Then, later, Chloe reading poetry in a quiet voice.

“This is what I like most of all in flowers: paradoxically, their endurance. The impression they give of a power in time, disseminated in space. Their seed-bomb aspect. The movement towards the future this includes and brings to mind. The bomb-about-to-go-off side of them, the awareness of their power, of their seed-charge. This glorious and touching, frail and disarming all at once. The ephemeral bubble aspect, the fireworks of generosity, specific or familial, volleys of possibility, promises of generation…”

She broke off. She was crying.

Young couldn’t open his eyes.

* * *

TJ was slumped forward over his bed.

He could see her from under his eyelashes, barely.

She was asleep, her head pillowed on her folded arms.

Her hand was resting on top of his hand.

* * *

When he woke again, he was able to open his eyes and keep them open.

Greer was sitting next to him.

He must have moved, because Greer’s eyes flicked to him. “Hey,” he said softly.

Young said, “You knew.”

Greer looked down and said nothing.

“Get out,” Young said.

* * *

At some point he became aware that he was in a hospital room.

It was small and neat and white. There was a window. In the distance, he could see the Rocky Mountains as a faint outline against the sky.

“Everett,” Camile Wray said in a quiet voice.

He turned his head and looked at her.

“Hi,” she said.

He didn’t say anything.

She regarded him in silence for a moment. “Do you know where you are?” she said at last.

“Yes,” he said.

“Good. That’s good.”

“Why are you here, Camile? You should be with your girlfriend. I want to be alone.”

“We’re all in quarantine,” she said. “You’ve been unconscious for almost a week.”

“Okay,” he said.

He supposed it was good to know.

“They’re talking about keeping you here longer,” she said. “They don’t know what happened to you. No one’s told them about, that—“

He couldn’t think of a reason to care.

She bit her lip and looked down. “Do you know what happened to him?”

“No,” he said.

She nodded, still not looking at him. “No one knows, then. Ginn came through the gate. She’s still here, helping Eli go through the database. The other two came too, but they didn’t— stay.”

“Great. Good news all around. So everyone wins.”

Wray flinched. “It’s not— There’s going to be an inquiry. Several inquiries. They don’t understand why we came through at such short notice. Stargate Command isn’t happy about losing the ship.”

“Yeah,” Young said.

“I’ll do everything I can to—“

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I just want you to know that—“

“It doesn’t matter, Camile.”

She paused. “Right,” she said. “Well. Even so.”

Young pushed himself to a seated position. Dizziness struck him, which wasn’t surprising. He supposed he would get used to it. People did, didn’t they? They adjusted to losing eyes and limbs. Everyone was always saying how remarkable the brain was. He remembered reading an article about it in a magazine.

“I don’t think you should be getting up,” Wray said.

“I’m fine,” Young said shortly. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

She didn’t say anything. Then, after a while, she asked, “Is there anything I can get you? Anything you need?”

“Some clothes?”

“TJ brought some.” She pointed to the nightstand. He hadn’t seen the stack of black fatigues.

“Right,” he said. “Thanks."

“Someone from medical’s going to be by later. And—“ she hesitated. “Dr. Mackenzie, from psychiatry.”

He looked at her sharply. “And whose fucking idea was _that?”_

“It was no one’s _idea_ , Everett,” Wray said quietly. “They’re trying to help you.”

“Nothing they do is going to help,” Young said.

* * *

When Wray had gone, he washed and dressed in the little bathroom. The new fatigues were stiff and clean. There was a disposable toothbrush in a plastic wrapper by the sink. Soap. Body wash. Lotion. The profligacy struck him as amazing.

His head hurt.

* * *

He slept for an hour in the sterile hospital bed and woke up choking on his own breath.

He was alone.

He was alone.

He was alone.

He was—

“You’re having a panic attack,” a woman in a white coat said levelly. She was holding his arms down. “Colonel Young, you’re having a panic attack. I need you to count your breaths with me.”

“No,” he choked out. “No, there’s something _wrong_.”

His heart was pounding in his chest, and he understood that this was because someone had cut half of it out of him. What was left couldn’t cope with the sheer volume of blood in his body. The muscle was exhausted. Pretty soon it would give up.

“There’s something wrong,” he tried to say again.

But they’d sedated him already.

He didn’t want to lose consciousness. He couldn’t move his mouth to explain that it was worse like that. That he didn’t want to be alone in his head.

* * *

“Are you feeling hopeless or helpless?” Dr. Mackenzie asked.

“No.”

“Are you having any thoughts of harming yourself?”

“No.”

“Are you having any thoughts of harming others?”

“No.”

“I heard you had a panic attack earlier today.”

“It’s been a long week.”

“I’m told you attempted to stay aboard the Destiny despite knowing it was going to be destroyed. Why would you do that?”

“There’s an old saying. Maybe you’ve heard.”

“So you refused to leave Dr. Rush on board a sinking vessel, as it were.”

“Yes.”

“And he saved your life.”

“Yes.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“Grateful.”

“Can you explain what caused you to suffer such a significant neurological event that your EEGs have deviated from the baseline readings on file?”

“No. I don’t know that I can.”

“No ideas?”

“None.”

“Tell me about Dr. Rush.”

Young didn’t say anything.

“Nothing?” Dr. Mackenzie asked. “No thoughts?”

“He was a miserable, untrustworthy son of a bitch,” Young said.

“But he brought your crew back to Earth. He saved your life.”

“Yes,” Young said. “He did.”

* * *

“They’re keeping me here for another week,” Young said. “Apparently I’m ‘uncommunicative.’”

He poked dully at the lump of mashed potatoes in the styrofoam container Chloe had brought for him.

“I have to come back,” Chloe said. “For monitoring. Next week, and then every month after that. They’re only letting me out because my mother pulled so many strings.”

“What do they think you’re going to do, turn into Godzilla?”

She managed a wan smile.

Outside the window, a purple Colorado dusk was coloring the sky over the white peaks of the mountains. Young could see the black smudge-marks of insects hovering around the parking lot lamps.

They sat in silence for a long time. Chloe was drinking a soda. She was dressed in black fatigues that were several sizes too large for her. She’d developed a habit of twisting the thin ring on her left hand, showing off its odd and appealing mix of colors.

“Camile’s getting you an apartment,” she said at last. “So when you do get out, you won’t have to worry about—“

“I don’t want to be taken care of,” Young said shortly.

She looked down. “No,” she whispered.

“There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“No one thinks there is.”

“Then why are they keeping me here?”

“I don’t know. Why are they bringing me in for monitoring?” Chloe said. She pulled her feet up into the chair she was sitting in, hugging her arms around her ankles.

“Because something changed us,” she answered her own question. “And they don’t like change. What’s to say something that’s changed once is going to stay the way it is now? It’s demonstrably unstable. It might change again. Maybe I _will_ turn into Godzilla. Maybe I’ll wake up one morning and play the cello. Maybe I’ll speak Russian and hack the internet. I probably won’t; I’ll probably just cut my hair short and get married. But once it’s happened, you can never really feel sure.”

She looked at the can of soda, which she’d set on the nightstand. It was sweating slightly. She touched a fingertip to it. “Water,” she said, holding the finger up. “Look. After all the time we spent worrying about it on Destiny. I think the world’s going to be weird.”

She wiped her finger against the sleeve of her jacket. “My taste in soda _has_ changed,” she said after a pause. “I don’t like Diet Coke anymore. I never noticed it when I was using the stones. Maybe it’s psychological.”

“All the food tastes different,” Young said. “I think it’s us.”

Chloe rested her head on her knees and looked at him. “You mean everyone on Destiny?” she asked. “Or you and me?”

Young didn’t say anything.

“You’re different. I know you’ve changed somehow. I know he—“

“Chloe,” Young said quietly, cutting her off.

She closed her eyes. “I think I’d like to turn into Godzilla,” she said. “Or a giant cockroach. Or a wildebeest. Maybe I could. I’ve never tried. Maybe they’re right. Anything could happen.”

In silence, Young offered her the cornbread roll from his dinner.

She shook her head and looked at a pale moth that was fluttering against the outside of the window. She watched it as it surveyed the area of the pane.

“No one monitors Godzilla,” she said after a while.

* * *

“Are you a homosexual?” Dr. Mackenzie asked.

“I don’t think you’re allowed to ask me that question. Not till after September.”

“There’s nothing wrong with it. I won’t tell.”

“Then why would you ask?”

“I’m asking because I’m interested.”

“I’m not interested in talking about it.”

“All right. Let’s talk about Dr. Rush.”

“ _He_ wasn’t a homosexual. He was happily married.”

“So were you.”

“Not so much.”

“Not happy, or not married?”

Young looked at the clock on the wall above the window. “Who can I talk to about getting another set of dog tags made?” he asked.

* * *

They couldn’t find any abnormalities in his bloodwork or his CT scans, so they had to let him go when the week was up.

Wray was back in Arlington, and Scott and Chloe were in California for the weekend so that Chloe could have an interview with Berkeley’s math department— “They’re supposed to have admitted everyone for next year already,” she’d said, “but the Air Force told them— I don’t know what the Air Force told them. Something. And—“ She’d looked down. “He sent them a letter about me.”

So when Young emerged into the insistent morning light, taken aback by the planetary vastness and the odor of springtime, the range of colors shading the far-off mountains and the verdurousness of the ornamental parking-lot trees, he didn’t know who was going to be driving him. Only that someone was coming. Feeling alien in his own country, and physically off-balance, he put on a pair of sunglasses that Scott had bought for him and saw that Greer was leaning against a Toyota parked in the fire lane.

“Hi,” Greer said.

Young didn’t know what to say.

“We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to,” Greer said. “It can just be a ride.”

Young squinted at him through the sunglasses. “Okay,” he said.

But then in the car Greer said, “How long you on leave for?” and he saw no reason not to answer.

“Two weeks,” he said.

“They going to send you offworld after that?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess that depends on whether or not they decide to can my ass.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Greer said.

Young said, “We’ll see.”

Greer said, “That’s not going to happen.”

Young hadn’t asked for the address of the apartment Wray had leased for him. But there were a couple of places in Colorado Springs where the SGC tended to stick people, places they had vetted and knew could be easily surveilled. So he probably shouldn’t have been surprised when Greer pulled into a complex that he recognized, a complex that would probably always look too-new and irritatingly suburban, with its cheerful painted colors and its white-picket-fence balconies.

“What’s so funny?” Greer asked.

“It’s not funny,” Young said, because it wasn’t.

He didn’t know how to feel about it.

He didn’t really feel anything.

He said, “I used to know someone who lived here, is all.”

Inside, the carpet was sea-green. The furniture didn’t look like it had come out of a showroom, but that was only because TJ had bought it.

“She was already getting stuff for her new place,” Greer said.

There were all the usual things. Chairs. A couch. A bed. He wandered through the apartment touching them as though to do so would be to own them in some sense beyond the nominal. But he didn’t feel like he owned any of it.

Greer lingered in the doorway. “I can run get you some groceries,” he said. “There’s nothing in the fridge right now.”

Young said, “Don’t fucking act like you can fucking make it up to me.”

“No, sir,” Greer said.

There was a silence.

“But you haven’t been back to Earth in a while,” Greer said. “Maybe better to ease into it.”

“Fine,” Young said.

So later Greer came back with a couple of bags of frozen dinners from the Safeway, a can of coffee, some milk and bread, and two six-packs of beer that he set down on the counter and looked at without saying anything.

Young folded his arms across his chest, ready to put forward a hostile front, and then abruptly he didn’t know why he was doing it. He wasn’t angry at Greer. He wasn’t angry at anyone. He wondered what it would feel like to be angry. He wasn’t sure.

“Stay,” he said. “Grab a beer.”

They sat on the balcony and talked about what the rest of the crew was up to. Out in the distance the last red flares of the sun died in the west. Eli was going to consult at the Mountain. Park was thinking of going into academia. Scott was going to move into recruiting for the program if Chloe decided to go to graduate school.

“And what about you?” Young asked.

Greer looked down at where he was peeling the label off his bottle of beer. “They’re putting me on SG-2,” he said. “Assuming I don’t fuck anything up before then.”

Young stared at him. “You’re fucking with me.”

“No, sir.”

“SG-2 is— You need multiple recs for that.”

Greer shrugged.

“I didn’t write one. I _would_ have, if you’d told me you wanted it.”

Greer shrugged again. He was carefully dissecting the damp label. “Colonel Telford put me up for it,” he said.

Young laughed. “ _Telford?_ ”

“Yeah.”

“You _assaulted_ Telford. He _hates_ you.”

“Yeah,” Greer said. “But—“

He looked up, blinking out at where little specks of light marked houses on the crests of the mountains. An airplane crossed the sky overhead. He was silent for a long time.

“You know,” he said at last, “that— he sent some things through. After.”

Young’s stomach clenched. “Yeah,” he managed. “Chloe told me. Some— letters of rec for people.”

“Yeah,” Greer said. And then he said again, “Yeah. His was one of— well, he wanted them to give me a medal, but of course he had no fucking idea how medals work, so they just took it as a rec for SG-2 instead. But he also, uh. There was some personal stuff. A note for Wray, just sort of generally thanking her for things. And he wrote a letter to Telford.”

He stole a glance at Young.

“Right,” Young said. “Of course he did.”

“So I guess he said something in that.”

Young said, “I’m sure he did. I’m sure he had a lot to say.”

Greer was silent again.

“Just because he didn’t—“ he said at last.

“Don’t,” Young said.

“He cared about you. He did.”

Young stood up abruptly and went indoors. He opened the refrigerator. He stared at its clean, bright, white interior. The carton of milk. The second six pack of beer. He had meant to grab another bottle of beer, but he didn’t. He just leaned against the door. The cool air slowly chilled the skin of his face. He wondered absently if there was a chance that the SGC would transfer him to Antarctica. He wouldn’t mind that, he thought. In some ways he’d be happy to go.

“You know I took a statement from him,” Greer said from behind him.

“I know,” Young said without turning. “To blackmail Telford with.”

“So I know a little about…” His voice trailed off. “I know a lot about,” he said. “I’m not going to tell you, before you ask. He was pretty sure Telford was going to keep his mouth shut. I don’t think he really wanted anyone else to know. But he knew that I was—“

“Loyal,” Young said with a trace of bitterness. He was still staring into the cold bright fridge.

“No,” Greer said. “He knew that I know— he knew that I know a couple of things. What it’s like to survive a really shitty situation, for one. And I’m not talking about your unit’s under fire on a Lucian Alliance world, and you’ve got shrapnel in your leg and six seconds to make it to the gate, and you just saw your best buddy take a shot to the head. I’m talking about you’ve got to eat shit day in and day out, just keep your fucking mouth shut and do it, and you do it because _maybe_ it’s going to get you what you want, and you don’t know how to stop wanting that thing, because we’re not built like that. People. Certain things, we just gotta want.”

He paused. “He knew that I know how hard it is, when someone dangles a little bit of that something you want, not to think, on some really fucked-up level, that they might just give you more of it. How you get hooked on that. How hard it is not to think that’s what everyone is doing. That they’re always just playing the same game.”

“I don’t want to have this conversation,” Young said.

He closed the refrigerator door. He hadn’t turned a light on in the kitchen. Outside, the sun had set, and now the room was dark.

“I know,” Greer said. “But that’s why he told me. Because I know that shit. And that’s why I’m telling you that it doesn’t mean anything. You know I learned some Ancient?”

The sudden change in subject threw Young for a loop. “What?”

“I learned a little bit of Ancient. Just for, you know, if he needed to talk about anything. So in Ancient I can talk to you about where it hurts, and if you’re tired, and if the mechanical failure is in the port or starboard array. But if you wanted me to talk to you about, I don’t know, music or some shit, I’d be out of luck. I don’t know the right words. What I’m saying is, he knew a lot of goddamn words for what Telford was doing. He knew that _real_ well. Maybe with you he didn’t know the words.”

“And what fucking good does that do me,” Young said in a low savage voice, “if he’s dead? What fucking difference does it make? Either way, he was a manipulative fucking remorseless, cold-hearted, scheming—“

His voice failed him.

Greer looked away.

Young struggled to overcome the urge to smash a beer bottle against the countertop. He gripped the edge of the kitchen island and breathed unsteadily.

“I talked to Dr. Jackson, you know,” Greer said at last. “He does the interviews for SG-2. He said that time up there doesn’t work the same. That it doesn’t mean anything if he hasn’t— that it’s early days yet.”

“How infinitely valuable Dr. Jackson’s opinion is,” Young bit out, “and how honored I am to have it.”

“Come on. You know how the doc was about time.”

“I’m not sitting around waiting for someone who had so demonstrably little regard for me as a person, as a fucking _human being_ , which _he_ wasn’t, by the way; he wasn’t a human being, he was a fucking _ontological complication_ , so it’s no wonder that when it came down to it he couldn’t, he couldn’t—“ Young took a breath. In a more level voice he said, “I’m not sitting around waiting for him. I’ve got a life, Greer. I’ve got my own life. It’s all right. I’m fine. I’m over it.”

“Right,” Greer said softly.

“I’m not mad at you. I just want to get on with my life.”

They stood in the dark for a while, not saying anything.

“The science team’s having a meet-up in a couple of weeks,” Greer said finally. “If you want to come. I’ll be there with Lisa, so— if you just get out of this apartment, or if you want to talk about anything—“

“I’ll think about it,” Young said flatly.

When Greer had gone, he took the rest of the beer out onto the balcony and drank through three bottles in rapid succession, staring out over the picket-fence balcony at the parking lot. He could hear the rush of traffic in the distance. He missed Destiny’s sublight engines, their low rumble under his feet. He missed Brody’s shitty grain alcohol, and the weird aftertaste it left on the back of your teeth, a little bit like motor oil. He hated Colorado. He’d always hated Colorado. He didn’t understand why anyone would want to live in a place where they had to see mountains. It was like someone had taken all the land you hadn’t gotten to yet and stacked it up on top of itself, so that you had to look at what was coming. So that there was no avoiding it.

He looked down at the empty bottle in his hand.

Then abruptly he was swinging his arm back and hurling the bottle out over the fat rows of sleeping cars. It shattered against the curb, spraying brown glass.

No one seemed to notice. Not a single light went on.

So he picked up the rest of the bottles and did the same thing, mechanically, watching their wobbling arcs glint in the yellow lot lights until the last, explosive moment of destruction. After a couple of minutes someone down the street slid the door of their balcony back and yelled, “Hey! What the hell are you doing?”

“Sorry!” Young yelled back. “It won’t happen again.”

“It better not!”

Young sank down onto the cold concrete, leaning against the railing and pulling his knees up to his chest. His head was pounding. “It won’t happen again,” he said again, loudly.

After a moment he whispered, “It won’t happen again.”

* * *

He reported back to the Mountain after two weeks. No one had found a reason not to clear him for reassignment. Everyone just… wished that he wasn’t there. The medical staff stared in frustration at his EEGs. Dr. Mackenzie had gotten tired of asking him about Rush. When Young passed officers in the corridors, they looked quickly away from him.

“You’ve got to understand,” General Landry said. “We all appreciate that you made the best of a bad situation. You brought your crew home safe. That’s all we can ask. But you also presided over the destruction of one of the most important discoveries since the stargate, and you didn’t exactly make yourself popular before that. You scuttled a number of projects stemming from Colonel Telford’s research, which, while he’s been remarkably gracious about it, especially in allowing you to drop your charges without reprisal, is still—“

“Rush,” Young said evenly. “You mean Rush. I didn’t bring Rush back.”

“Yes,” General Landry said uncomfortably. “Well.”

“It’s all right. You can say it. I didn’t.”

Landry flipped through a folder on his desk. He seemed to feel this was tantamount to changing the subject. “As I said, you didn’t exactly make yourself popular. But Sheppard’s willing to take you, and historically Atlantis has been a rewarding placement for—“ he hesitated. “Some of our less conventional officers.”

“Right,” Young said. “Atlantis.”

“I understand you don’t have the Ancient gene, but gene therapy’s been successful in a majority of candidates.”

Landry seemed to be waiting for a response.

“Okay,” Young said.

“Good. Then that’s settled. You’ll replace Major Lorne as Sheppard’s second. I’d say you should be set to gate out in about two weeks, provided the IOA doesn’t want further testimony from you. You can put this whole—“ he gestured vaguely— “fiasco behind you. That’s for the best, don’t you think?”

“Yes, sir,” Young said.

* * *

Three days later he got an email from Sheppard.

 _ **To:** young.201@chevron-mail.gov_  
_**From:** {WH-Routing} sheppard.3@chevron-mail.gov_

_**Subject:** hey-o_

_Young—_

_Heard you’re heading out to this neck of the woods. Happy to have you. Lorne was a square. How are you you old son of a gun & whatever other thing people in old movies say after years & years. Shit is it really years? I guess you were lost in space and I was running a fucking city. Heard about what happened & dont believe the hype. Wel’l catch up when you get here. Im sending along some mission reports so you can get caught up on the 411 in Pegasus. Do people still say 411. I havent been back to earth in a century._

_Bring some frito-Lays with you._

_Shep_

Sheppard had attached a long list of documents labeled by date and gate designation. Apparently Atlantis was back at war with the Genii, who’d gotten enthusiastic about aboveground nuclear testing, and the Wraith had developed some kind of genetic engineering program to try to find faster methods of feeding. So that was great.

The reports were half Sheppard’s terse, badly punctuated sentences, and half McKay’s sesquipedalian overkill. Young found he liked the latter better. He started flipping through to get to the good parts.

_— at which point I discovered that the hardware was a fusion of Ancient and endogenous technology, likely the work of the small population who survived the first culling. My primary goal was to cut power to the communications array; however, in the course of doing so, I was able to locate a number of remarkable items in their database, including identification of local anisotropy and acceptance of a modified form of the FLRW metric in which the spatial component of the metric was not time-dependent._

Young stared at the computer screen. He’d been drinking. A little. Maybe more than he should have been. Cheap whiskey from a styrofoam cup, because TJ had bought him dishes, but he couldn’t bear to open the cabinets. He didn’t know why. He should’ve told her that he didn’t want them. That he didn’t want anything.

He turned over the paperwork he was supposed to be filling out prior to his departure, which essentially established that it wasn’t the U.S. government’s fault if he got eaten by a Wraith, and that if he did, TJ was his next of kin.

He wrote down the equation describing the FLRW metric. He drew a box around it and looked at it. He pulled out the time-dependent terms and started playing with them. _Playing_ was the right word. The math was easy, effortless. No. Not effortless. It was the first thing like it actually required more than three fucking percent of his head, and that was good, that was necessary, because there’s a problem with having a head that compresses all ordinary problems to three fucking percent, and the problem, the real bitch of a problem is that it leaves the other ninety-seven percent of your head free to do what it wants to and what it wants to do on any given day is just fucking remind you in its subtle biochemical ways of a glass flying at the wall and a radio flying at the window and hands holding you down in the water and/or on a bed and so the key the _key_ is to overload its capacitors, but it’s so fucking hard to do when the world insists on being repetitions of eating and sleeping and that’s all it is over and over again–

After an hour, he put down his biro. Every sheet of paper was covered with equations, neat Greek letters, parentheses, brackets. He’d torn Einstein’s field equations apart. His head ached, and his vision was blurry. When he stood up to get some paracetamol, the room lurched around him and he nearly hit the floor.

He went to the bathroom and threw up the Lean Cuisine he’d eaten for dinner.

But later he couldn’t stop thinking about the math.

* * *

Chloe showed up on his doorstep a week before he was supposed to leave for Atlantis. She was wearing a pair of black-rimmed glasses and a neatly-knotted scarf. She looked very precise, as though she’d put herself together according to a schematic.

When he opened the door, he saw that she was holding a bottle of wine. She held it up. “I brought you a housewarming present.”

“It’s not a house,” Young said in response.

“Whatever.” She rolled her eyes.

“Semantic exactitude is a virtue.”

They stood there and looked at each other.

“No one’s heard from you,” Chloe said.

“So you were assigned to come make sure I wasn’t drinking myself to death?”

“No.” She looked down. “Matt says you’re heading offworld.”

“Yeah. Atlantis. Getting the hell out of here.”

She nodded jerkily. “We’re moving to California. I’m going to Berkeley.”

“Congratulations.”

“The SGC has a unit at Travis, so I won’t have to come back to Colorado every month.”

“Convenient,” Young said.

“Yes.” Chloe was gripping the bottle of wine tightly. “We thought we’d wait till we were settled to have the wedding; everyone’s— everyone’s moving so much; Brody and Volker are going to Area 51, and Camile’s in DC, and Varro hasn’t been cleared to leave the Mountain yet, and you’re— and—“

Young realized abruptly that she was on the brink of tears.

He shut his eyes. “Come on in,” he said gently. He took the bottle of wine from her and shut the door.

She watched him as he crossed the room to the kitchen and rummaged for a corkscrew.

“I’ve got glasses around here somewhere,” he said, “but I don’t really use them. How do you feel about pinot noir out of a plastic cup?”

“That’s fine,” she whispered.

“Go ahead and move stuff off the table if you want to sit down.”

She did sit, but when he carried the plastic cups over, he saw that she was looking at his notes on the FLRW metric. She wore a frown of concentration. “These are… yours?” she said uncertainly, glancing up at him.

“Yeah,” Young said. He put a cup down in front of her.

“They look essentially correct.”

“I know,” he said awkwardly, because he did know.

“I didn’t know you were interested in quintessence.”

He shrugged. He didn’t know what to say. He took a sip of his wine and didn’t sit down.

She looked down at the notes again, tracing the angles of a sigma with a manicured fingertip. “I still have all my notes on predicting brane collision,” she said in a very small voice. “I can’t talk about it with most people because it’s classified. But if you wanted to—“

“I don’t,” he said shortly.

He drained his cup and went to pour himself more wine.

When he came back, she had taken off her glasses. Her head was in her hands.

He sighed and sat down at the table. After a moment, he reached out and put a hand on her arm.

“I keep thinking that when I get to Berkeley it’ll be better,” she whispered. “I’ll be able to talk about math with people. I won’t feel so— but they won’t _know_. I can’t tell them anything. I’m supposed to say I’ve been doing work overseas for the Air Force. Matt’s the only one who’ll know the truth. But I can’t talk about math with him. And I just feel like what they say I am, when they do those stupid tests. Some kind of strange hybrid _thing_ that’s not supposed to exist. That just makes problems for people.”

“Yeah,” Young said with difficulty. “I get you.”

She nodded silently _._

“What are you supposed to say you’ve been doing overseas for the Air Force?”

“I don’t know,” she said. She smiled painfully. Gradually the smile collapsed. “Something that’s going to explain why I act like I’ve been living in a war zone. Why I get confused by the new iPhones and don’t know who Ke$ha is. Why I’m not used to the idea of weather and get weird about food and water.”

“I haven’t worked the food thing out either,” Young said.

She studied him for a long moment. “He liked Indian food,” she said in a low voice. “Maybe you should try to—“

“Do I look like someone who eats fucking Indian food?” It came out tired rather than angry, but Chloe still flinched. “I mean— Christ,” Young said helplessly. “Christ, Chloe. I’m from Buffalo, Wyoming. I’m a hick.”

Chloe stared down at her plastic cup. “I like Indian food,” she said. “We could— we could order some. If you wanted. If you didn’t mind. I could stay. We could talk about— we could talk about the FLRW metric.”

So, in the end, that was what they did. Chloe made him get chicken tikka masala, vegetable korma, lamb curry, saag paneer, two orders of naan, several kinds of chutney, and pickled lemons, plus something called a gulab jamun that resembled a round brown rock. It all looked disgusting, but the smell made him hungry. He ate some of everything but the spinach. It was the most he’d managed to eat since he got back to Earth.

“Sometimes strange things make me hungry,” Chloe said reflectively, dipping a piece of naan in the korma. “I haven’t even told Matt this. Dragonflies. I want to eat dragonflies, for some reason. But also gravel. And I went to buy new clothes at Nordstrom, and almost put a pashmina scarf in my mouth. I don’t know why. I don’t even think that’s what they ate. It’s just how my body tries to make sense of it.”

“I wouldn’t tell the people at the SGC that,” Young said.

“I know. You got off easy with Indian food.”

After a while she split the gulab jamun with a fork and put half of it on his place. He ate it. It was a little bit like a very sweet hush puppy.

“I was thinking Antarctica,” she said.

“What?”

“For where I’ve been with the Air Force. I was thinking of saying Antarctica.”

Young considered. “Well,” he said, “it’s remote. But not really a war zone.”

“There’s polar bears. Aren’t there polar bears?”

“Miss Armstrong, please unburden me of the impression that you believe us to be at war with polar bears.”

There was a long pause.

Chloe’s eyes were wet. She was staring fixedly at the table.

“Anyway, I think polar bears live in the Arctic,” Young managed, his throat tight.

“I’m sure you’re right,” Chloe said.

* * *

Later, when she had gone, he went into the bedroom and stared at himself in the mirror on the wall. He took stock of his features: wide, blunt face; eyes a changeable amber color; dark curls getting so out-of-control that they were practically a fuck-you to the brass.

“You’re dead,” he whispered, touching the mirror. “You’re dead. You’re _not real_.”

* * *

“Tell me about your dreams,” Dr. Mackenzie said.

“I thought you shrinks didn’t actually say that.”

“It’s just something to talk about. Is there something else you’d rather talk about instead?”

“I’ll talk about my dreams if you want,” Young said. “There’s. You know. All the usual suspects. Flying. Falling. Showing up to work naked.”

“That sounds like a stock answer.”

“It sounded like a stock question.”

“Would you rather talk about Dr. Rush?”

Young didn’t say anything.

“So. Dreams it is.”

“My dreams are— I don’t know— normal. I used to go skiing down in New Mexico. Sometimes I dream about that.”

_He’s not actually skiing. He’s lying flat against a snowbank in the mountains, staring up at the sea of stars. They’re winking out one by one, and he understands that this is because the Earth is drifting into an intergalactic void. Soon there will be no light and heat. He’ll have slipped through one of the universe’s cracks into a cold and life-free chasm._

_Even so, meteors keep up their hair-fine coruscations, flashing uninterpretable signals across the sky. There is never a shortage of objects eager for mesospheric immolation. Young watches them numbly, waiting for one to survive its descent. He wants a meteorite to strike him. He is a dense collapsing body; there ought to be some gravitic force that he can exert. Some way to ensure that he’s pulverized into nothingness, ground into snow and ash and dirt._

_The stars go out. His breath forms clouds in the darkness. It gets colder. Gradually he realizes that he can no longer feel his limbs._

_“I wish,” he whispers. “I wish—“_

“I dream about being home in Wyoming.”

_He pulls the car over on the side of the highway. The radio sputters to a stop. He leaves the keys in the ignition and steps out into the lazy gold sunlight, looking out over the red cliffs and the faded grass. He can smell cold air and sagebrush. He thinks he can smell the Powder River, although it’s too far off, and he shouldn’t be able to. He takes off his sunglasses and folds them in his pocket. He leaves the car door open. He walks out into the middle of the road, staring down the stretch of it running for miles between the hills, rising and falling like a ululation, a sound wave that only land can propagate. For a second he has the absurd sensation that it’s a sound wave he’s creating. It’s coming out of his body. It’s a howl. It’s a shriek. It’s a cry._

_He kneels down and touches it. It’s hard under his fingers._

_He lies down on it and closes his eyes._

_Please, he thinks. He prays for an eighteen-wheeler, one of the big long-distance trucks. Something to come out of nowhere and split him open, crush him in an instant, turn him into dust. To grind him into the inarticulate earth of his own desolation._

_He waits. But nothing ever comes._

“I don’t know what you want me to say. My dreams are— normal.”

“I get the feeling you’re not being truthful,” Mackenzie said.

“Oh, yeah? And why is that?”

“You yourself are not normal. On a basic, physiological level, you’ve changed. Your EEGs have changed. The electricity of your _brain_ is different. You’re telling me your dreams are the same? I find that hard to believe.”

Young didn’t say anything.

“You insist that everything’s fine. You insist that nothing happened to you. But something _did_ happen to you. Something _terrible_ happened to you. And until you recognize that fact—“

“I don’t know what to tell you. You want me to tell you I dream about him? I don’t. It’s been five fucking weeks since I got back to Earth, and not once in that time have I fucking dreamt about him.”

Mackenzie was silent for a long time. “You’ve developed this habit,” he said, “of clenching and unclenching your fists. Why do you think it is you do that?”

“Why do you fucking think I do that? You’re the fucking psychiatrist.”

“Yes,” Mackenzie said. “I am. Are you feeling hopeless or helpless?”

“No.”

“Are you having any thoughts of hurting other people?”

“No.”

“Are you having any thoughts of hurting yourself?”

“No.”

“Then I have no reason not to clear you for duty, despite my reservations. I understand you’ve been assigned to Atlantis?”

“Yes.”

“I hope the time offworld helps you develop some perspective.”

Young said, “To be honest, I just want to put it all behind me.”

He forced himself to relax his fists.

* * *

_He dreams that he takes a sledgehammer to the cabin. This is a dream, so he doesn’t have to give a shit about physics; he doesn’t have to worry about bringing the roof down on himself. He can start wherever he likes, and he starts with the music room. The piano, with its array of finely balanced strings and hammers, its shell of glossy auburn wood. He brings the hammer down on it and the noise is— what he wanted. Broken chords, dissonant, soundtracking their own demolition, shouting out pained fistfuls of notes as the wood starts to split and warp. He pounds and pounds at it until the keys are flying off in ivory splinters, and the strings have snapped, and there’s really nothing left to hit. Nothing worth hitting. Then he kicks aside the debris and smashes the hammer into a wall._

_For three nights he tears the cabin apart. He does it calmly and meticulously, room by room. The chalkboard in the office. The bed that they’d fucked on. The fucking maths journals that he carts downstairs and feeds to the fire. The paintings that he puts his fist through and adds to the growing heap of trash. When he’s done he sits on the leather couch in the epicenter of the destruction. He watches as the last journal blackens in the fireplaces, pages curling and going to ash._

_He doesn’t dream about the cabin after that._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem Chloe reads is by Francis Ponge.


	70. Chapter 70

**May**

Young’s assignment to Atlantis got off to an inauspicious start when he shorted out the city as soon as he walked through the gate.

* * *

“Technically, I did that too,” Sheppard confided, sitting beside Young in the infirmary, where Young woke up a half-hour later, because shorting out the city had also shorted out _him_. “But in my defense, it’d been underwater for thousands of years at that point.”

Young propped himself up on one elbow, feeling dizzy. He noted that the power was back on; the last thing he’d been aware of before he’d hit the deck had been every light cranking itself up to an intolerable, exultant brightness before burning out in an incandescent flare. “Can you— _hear_ that?” he asked.

Sheppard looked at him unreadably. “Kind of,” he said.

“What does that mean, _kind of_?”

“When you came through it was— loud. Like something wanted your attention.”

Young thought of the way that dogs greeted servicemen coming back from deployments, leaping in frantic circles, begging, tackling their owners, overwhelming them with enthusiastic licks. Like that, but mechanical, somehow, and cut through with desperate melancholy. That was what it had been like. Maybe the city had known that he wasn’t really him. That he wasn’t really _him_. That he wasn’t really— what it wanted. But still, he had something of the same metaphorical scent, and after thousands of years, that was enough.

Thousands of years, he thought. Jesus.

He could still feel it, or hear it, or whatever: a happy but somewhat chastened hum, a chorus of ungainly chirps from circuitry asking him questions, not in language, but in a kind of intent he only vaguely understood. _Do you know us? Do you like us? Are we good? Are we what you wanted? Will you stay? Do you love us? We love you. Are we good?_

He thought that the city would have done anything he asked it to. But he didn’t want it to do anything. He wanted it to leave him alone. He didn’t want it in his head.

Sheppard was watching him curiously. “I thought you didn’t have the gene,” he said.

“I don’t.”

“Right.” Sheppard stood up. “Of course you don’t. Well, nice to know you’re still a pain in my ass, and a fucking paradox to boot. By the way, welcome to Atlantis.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t send me straight back,” Young said.

“Hey, you break it, you bought it.”

“Is that what they told _you?_ ”

Sheppard’s mouth quirked. He slouched against the wall and didn’t answer. After a while, he said, “What does it sound like?”

“What?”

“The city. No one else really— gets it. So I was just— curious what it sounds like to you.”

Young looked away. He didn’t want to answer. “Abandoned,” he said.

Sheppard’s mouth tightened. He nodded, and didn’t say anything. After a while he turned to go.

There was a moment before the infirmary doors opened for him when Young expected him to walk right through them, or else just vanish in midair. But he didn’t. He had to wait, just like anybody else. His boots left faint marks against the deck.

* * *

Aside from the shorting-out-the-city business, Young thought he made a passable go at settling in. He showed up to briefings. He went on missions. He sat with other people in the mess. He was polite and likable and patient, even where McKay was concerned. He didn’t chime in to point out errors in McKay’s math. He didn’t share the notes he’d been making on zero point module manufacture. And he read Ancient now, apparently, which was a plus.

(“It’s a contraction,” he said absently, studying a half-eroded tablet on a world called Liria. “For _ne hod._ It’s a dialect thing. The double negative doesn’t cancel, of course, and the ablative is being used to indicate spatial relationship. I assume the _en_ is implied. _Neod iam ne habitent quia_ , They don’t live in this place anymore because…” Everyone on the team looked at him in silence, until the air was thick and awkward with it.)

“No, really,” Sheppard said. “Everyone likes you a lot. You’re just a little… you know how when someone flips out and kills a bunch of people, all the neighbors are like, He was such a nice guy?”

“Are you suggesting I’m a mass murderer?” Young asked mildly.

He and Sheppard were sitting out on one of the piers in the sunlight. They seemed to have reached an unspoken agreement of some kind: they only interacted in public places. Young thought that each of them probably had his own unexamined reasons for this.

“No. Or, I mean—“ Sheppard paused. “Well, we’re all mass murderers, really,” he said after a while. “You either get philosophical about it or you go crazy. I try not to think about it that much.”

“Cheerful,” Young said, toasting him with a beer.

But he liked Sheppard’s grim streak. Once upon a time, he’d probably found it disturbing. But there wasn’t much that disturbed him anymore.

“You just seem like someone who has a lot going on,” Sheppard said. “Under the surface. I get it. I do.”

Young laughed, a little unkindly. “You really don’t,” he said.

* * *

When he was off-duty, he tended to go to his quarters and curl up in bed, folding his arms over his ears as though that would block out the city’s voices. He lay there tangled in the blankets, his head pounding, as the light through his window changed from white to gold to red, going to a dull velvet color as night settled over the ocean.

He tried listening to music. He tried pacing his bedroom.

It didn’t make a difference. Atlantis whispered to him, telling him about abandoned towers filled with empty rooms that craved to be opened and entered, their contents catalogued and touched and revered. It told him about white staircases leading down under the ocean to stone chambers filled with the artifacts of long-forgotten philosopher-saints, and archives of epic poetry that he alone could decipher. He knew by instinct, through this wordless communication, which doorways would lead him there. _We love you_ , the city said. _We love you._

Eventually Young got good at pretending not to notice it.

* * *

Sometimes he went running through the corridors till his legs gave out, till he couldn’t get enough oxygen to his head and he threw up or had to stand doubled over, waiting, till the buzz of proto-syncope faded and the could hear the city whispering again. He’d lost weight. Everyone commented on it.

Really, he had never been in better shape.

* * *

The noise never went away. It was there when he woke in the morning, a subdued hum of machinery intra-conversing, and it ebbed and peaked throughout the day. At night it seemed louder: a constant semi-musical clamor of voices chirping and vibrating in the chambers of his head.

He had a hard time sleeping. In a way, that was easier. It meant he didn’t have to dream.

Sometimes he walked the halls instead, feeling desolate and exhausted, listening to the uninterpretable hubbub of circuits, crystals, conduits, cables talking to themselves. Or talking to him as he got near them, wanting his affection. When that happened, he pulled away as if burnt. He couldn’t handle their naked yearning. He didn’t want it near him. In time they seemed, not without unhappiness, to accept this.

The second week he was there, he ran into Sheppard at what was probably about 4 AM. Sheppard was standing in a corridor underneath the southwest arm of the city, staring up at the ceiling and leaning against a wall. From there it was possible to hear waves crashing against the pier overhead. It was kind of soothing, actually: the back-and-forth of the ocean and the sense of being barricaded safely against it.

Sheppard glanced over at him. “You too, huh?” he said.

“I don’t know how you get any sleep around here,” Young said. “I can’t stand it.”

Sheppard looked at him for a long time. There was something weary in his expression, blurred and haunted, which Young recognized intimately. “Well,” he said. “I do know _one_ good way.”

* * *

So they went to bed.

Young was tired and desperate. He kissed Sheppard the way he would have kissed the concept of sleep, the way he would have sucked eagerly at the bottom lip of a drug that promised to make him forget. Sheppard was quiet and forceful, with a kind of uncertainty to him, pausing before he took Young’s shirt off, before he took off Young’s pants, his eyes flicking to Young’s face as though asking a question that he didn’t want to have to say out loud.

“Yes,” Young said thickly, answering that question. “God, yeah.”

Really neither of them spoke very much. Young had the sense that there was a pane of glass between them, or something more soundproof and harder to break than glass. He probably could have broken it with a little effort. Or Sheppard could have, also. But neither of them wanted to. It was there for a reason. They stayed within its confines, and were careful not to mention it.

Sheppard did say at one point, his mouth curving, as Young had him pressed down onto his bed and was sucking kisses into his neck, “I always thought you’d have the most macho sex. Or else you’d pretend we weren’t having sex at all, like you’d be coming in me and it’d be like, Oh, whoops, how on earth did my dick get there? But you’re Mr. Foreplay. It’s kind of sweet.”

“I don’t want to be _sweet_ ,” Young said, because he didn’t. It made something in his stomach curdle.

Sheppard blinked up at him, his mouth curving more, something hard and challenging in the expression. “Well, shit. Then don’t be,” he said. “I’m not your prom date, Everett. Just fuck me. Or have you not gotten there yet?”

Young shuddered and thrust against him, riding the soft skin of Sheppard’s oddly scarred stomach. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. Fuck. I want that. I have. I mean— I mean—“

“Right. Not in the passive voice,” Sheppard said, with a somewhat wry twist of his lips, something that wasn’t angry, just weary. “Put that on the back burner for the moment. I like getting fucked.”

So Young fucked him. It was good sex; Sheppard knew what he was doing, and he wasn’t shy about telling Young what he wanted done. And he was beautiful, lying there panting and pale-backed, a portion of his remoteness retreating to reveal something raw and sad and secret, something that made Young feel sick with attraction to him. Sheppard didn’t mind that Young went too hard, probably, and came too fast, and he seemed to enjoy the dazed way Young jerked him off after. He sucked in a shaky breath just as he came, and then—

—he looked at Young, wide-eyed and child-like, like he was about to ask Young a question that he hadn’t quite formulated yet. _Please,_ the question would be. In the dim light, his face seemed to blur or flicker. He was about to say, _I wish you would please—_

Young shoved himself away from the bed with sudden violence, his hands shaking. He stared at Sheppard. His eyes were hot and his throat had closed.

“I have to— I have to go,” he managed, fumbling for his clothes. “I’m really— sorry; it’s not— it’s not—“

Sheppard pushed himself to his elbows. He was still shivery with orgasm. “You’ve got to be fucking with me,” he said.

“No, I, uh—“ Young swallowed. He was having trouble getting the words out. “I should have told you; I'm sorry; I— There was— there was someone who—“

The hard, incredulous expression on Sheppard’s face didn’t change. But he said, “Dead, or ex?”

Young folded his arms over his head. He felt like he had punctured a lung. He thought that if he didn’t get out of the room, he was going to have a panic attack. “Both,” he said. “I don’t know. Both.”

He thought that Sheppard said something, but he didn’t know what it was, really. He was pushing his feet into his boots and stumbling out the door, uniform jacket unbuttoned, and something happened in the hallway between Sheppard’s quarters and his own, because then he was sitting, barefoot but fully clothed, under the heavy deluge of his shower, hugging his knees tightly to his chest. Huge, ugly breaths kept tearing his throat open. The world was white around the edges and his breastbone hurt. This is what dying feels like, he thought without much reaction. This is what dying feels like. He leant his head back under the lukewarm water and waited to die.

It didn’t happen.

When he’d freaked out in quarantine, the doctors on Earth had given him Xanax. After an hour or so had passed, he got up, his wet clothes heavy against his body, and made himself take some of that. It didn’t help, but it made him feel less like he was dying.

He supposed some people would see that as a benefit.

* * *

 _ **To:** {WH-Routing} armstrong.85@chevron-mail.gov_  
_**From:** young.201@chevron-mail.gov_

_**Subject:** <No Subject>_

  _How are you kiddo, just wondering what’s up in California. Everything here is going great. Really great._

_Thought maybe you’d get a kick out of a problem the guys are tossing around in the labs here. Have you read Ray and Frisch et al’s article on the Tyger phenomenon for Galerkin-truncated Burgers and Euler equations? One of the mathematicians here thinks she’s figured out a way to purge the tygers. Sending along her notes. See if you can figure out why someone living in a ZPM-powered location might be interested in resonance interactions._

_EY_

* * *

He showed up at Sheppard’s door a few days later. He didn’t say anything. Sheppard looked at him silently and let him in. They kissed for a while with a kind of hard, fierce, and almost mechanical perfection, greedy and gasping, before jacking each other off on Sheppard’s narrow Ancient bed. Afterwards Young went home and threw up.

* * *

 _ **To:** {WH-Routing} armstrong.85@chevron-mail.gov_  
_**From:** young.201@chevron-mail.gov_

_**Subject:** Re: Re:  <No Subject>_

_Everything’s great here. I get to fly puddlejumpers. Those are the little ships that go through the gate. If anything I’m getting spoiled here. No protein paste! Don’t worry about me._

_EY_

* * *

He kept going back. Sheppard didn’t ask him any questions. They were good together. There were times it was restful. They both seemed to want the same thing, or at least not to mind what they were getting. They stopped talking, mostly, except to ask, “Is this…?” or “Is it okay if I…?” or to say, “Yeah. Fuck. Like that.”

Once, Young said without meaning to, after he’d come and he was mouthing Sheppard’s collarbone hazily, “I always wished I could touch you, you know. I wanted to hold you.”

“You could’ve,” Sheppard said, squinting at him with a bemused smile.

“No,” Young whispered. “No, I couldn’t.” He dropped his head against Sheppard’s chest.

* * *

 _ **To:** {WH-Routing} armstrong.85@chevron-mail.gov_  
_**From:** young.201@chevron-mail.gov_

_**Subject:** Re: ???_

_I don’t know what TJ’s talking about. I answer my emails. I’m answering this one aren’t I?_

_EY_

* * *

He never slept at Sheppard’s. Sometimes when he got back to his quarters, when he was done showering for two or three hours, or, once, putting his fist through a wall, he sat out on the balcony, gazing out at the flat rippling surface of the water. The sea looked solid as land under the moons. He didn’t know how deep it was. Deep, he thought. More than deep enough to drown in. Past his instinctive horror of water, the idea appealed to him. At least when you were drowning, you didn’t have to pretend you weren’t drowning. There was only one choice: to sink or to fight. It would be relaxing to sink, probably. Just to finally surrender. To be free of the suffocating burden that was the responsibility to live.

* * *

 _ **To:** {WH-Routing} armstrong.85@chevron-mail.gov_  
_**From:** young.201@chevron-mail.gov_

_**Subject:** Re: Re:  <No Subject>_

_I get what you’re saying but how long has it taken to even declassify the existence of wormholes and you think they’re going to get there with material evidence of supersymmetry??? Optimistic of you. I suspect that Dr. Starr is correct and you’re going to have to choose between working on a nonclassified thesis and going into academia or staying in the Program, in which case you could work on whatever you liked. It’s up to you of course but I rather think you’re already living with the downsides of such a situation and might as well take advantage of any potential benefits._

_Why on Earth would you develop an opinion on Yang-Mills theory before mastering basic quantum physics in the first place? No wonder you’ve ended up in difficulties._

_EY_

* * *

**June**

He started having dreams in which he was suspended in a glass tank, skin chilled by ionized water, Nakai transmitter affixed to his head. Outside the tank, people came and went— sometimes the crew of Destiny, TJ looking anguished, Greer mouthing words Young couldn’t hear, Chloe pressing her hands against the glass and staring at him with large sorrowful eyes. Once David Telford stood there, smirking at him.

Young was aware that he was being tortured, but he didn’t understand why. No one had asked him any questions.

“What do you want from me?” he said. But the words were lost in the rigid mask of his breathing apparatus.

He thrashed against the cold prison of the water. “What do you _want_ from me?” he tried to demand. “Please— just tell me what you want—“

Eventually he ripped the mask off his face. He would rather drown, he thought, than—

The dreams always ended at the point at which he breathed in.

* * *

“I want you to fuck me,” Young said.

Sheppard stopped what he was doing, which was etching letters across one of Young’s nipples with his tongue, and looked at him unreadably. “Okay,” he said. “Is this, like, a special occasion? Should I have baked you a cake?”

“Do you want to or not?” Young asked shortly, tightening his hands on Sheppard’s waist a little too hard.

“I think I’m allowed to wonder.”

“Because I want you to,” Young said. His throat was tight. “I want you inside me. I want to feel you inside me. I want you to fuck me open. I want you to make me take it. I want you to—“

“Shit,” Sheppard said, in a very controlled voice. His mouth was hanging slightly open. “Oh, my God. Please stop talking.”

Young dragged him down, hips to hips, and felt him shudder. “Is that a yes?” he murmured in Sheppard’s ear.

It turned out to be a yes.

He didn’t want Sheppard to be careful, but Sheppard was careful, fingering him till he was relaxed and taking him in short slippery thrusts that didn’t go as deep as Young wanted them to. He wanted to be broken. He wanted to be cracked. He felt invulnerable, sealed in a shell that nothing could penetrate. He’d thought that maybe being fucked would force him open wide, like someone had seized the two halves of his ribcage and spread them, exposing the damaged muscle that they hid. He thought maybe it would mean he had to submit, that he could just _stop fighting_. He was tired of fighting. He’d thought that maybe at the least it would mean being touched deep inside his body, in the untouchable places that no one could ever reach. He was tired of not being touched on the inside. He was so tired of being alone in his body.

But it was just another sex act, in the end.

Eventually Sheppard turned less careful, and Young shoved back against him, and everything got harder and started to hurt, and he liked _that;_ he reached back and gripped Sheppard’s arm, trying to communicate that he should go faster, and Sheppard did, until their bodies made an audible sound slapping together, and Young pressed his forehead down against the bed, and then Sheppard was groaning and panting and murmuring indecipherable things against him and gradually coming to a halt, draped over his back.

Afterwards he was sore. Sheppard sucked him off gently and planted an unexpected kiss on his hip. When Young started to get up, wincing slightly, Sheppard said, “You could stay if you wanted.”

His face was closed and unreadable.

“No,” Young said. “I can’t.”

Sheppard looked away. “Why are you doing this?”

Young felt caught off guard. “Does it matter?”

“I thought maybe you were trying to prove something about, you know, the gay thing. Or your ex. But you’re more fucked-up than that, aren’t you?”

“Wow,” Young said flatly. “This is some afterglow.”

“I’m just speaking as one fucked-up person to another,” Sheppard said. He seemed tired.

Young didn’t say anything. He was aware that his hands were clenching and unclenching at his sides.

“People make jokes about me being married to Atlantis,” Sheppard said after a while. He was still looking away from Young. “Which is pretty much the truth. I don’t mind. But you feel it. It’s like a haunted house. Everyone who could have loved it is dead. They made it so it could be alone, and then they died, or they fucked off, ascension, whatever, and all it’s got is me now, and I can’t make it not be alone. I mean—“ He smiled painfully. “Not to downplay my general awesomeness as a person. Did the Ancients race remote control cars? I don’t think so. Plus, I’d die for it. I probably will, I guess. I just— can’t make it not be alone. At this point I don’t think anyone can. It had too much to lose. And it lost it all. It’s too big, you know? Not the city. Just the—“

He made a gesture with his hands, sketching out a shape in the air. “Just the size of how alone it is.”

Young turned away.

“Everett—” Sheppard said.

Everything about his voice was so familiar.

Young did love him, in a way.

“I have to go,” Young forced out.

Sheppard tipped his head back against the wall. He turned his face away.

“Yeah. I think you do,” he said.

* * *

Young could make his shower hotter or colder by thinking about it. By just sort of asking the circuits to do what he wanted them to do. But doing so meant that he could feel how much they loved him, how much they wanted to be loved, and when he sank down onto the floor of the little shower cubicle after coming home from Sheppard’s, he just couldn’t bear to—

“Fuck you,” he said out loud, his voice almost unintelligible. “Fuck you, _fuck you_ —“

He slammed his hand against the wall, and then again, and again. The skin on his knuckles split, but the water washed away the blood.

He was doubled over into himself, his chest heaving.

“Fuck you,” he choked out. “You don’t. You _don’t_. You _never did_.”

Vaguely he was aware that he was crying. Or not crying. There were no tears. But his body was going through the motions of crying, shaking and uncoordinated and hot and achey. He made a noise that he had never made before, a kind of low, raw moaning sound. If he could just cry, he thought, if he could cry, at least he could get the feeling out of his body, but even that was beyond him; the pain was part of him now. No, not even part of him. Without pain, there was no him.

* * *

 _ **To:** {WH-Routing} armstrong.85@chevron-mail.gov_  
_**From:** young.201@chevron-mail.gov_

_**Subject:** Re: Re: Re: Re:  <No Subject>_

_Nothing of note to report here. It’s all going good! Yesterday there was a revolt in the mess because the soft-serve machine broke down. I thought the scientists were going to stage a sit-in protest._

_In regards to your question: a breadth of interests is hardly unusual in truly gifted persons, though I understand Dr. Starr’s reservations. Personally, I see no reason why you shouldn’t continue to work on the question of whether a Banach-Tarski paradox exists in the hyperbolic plane H^2. It’s a rich enough problem to support a paper with which you could establish yourself, and perhaps you could then expand your work from there. Of course, if the SGC is interested in funding you to work on the mathematics of zero point energy, that’s another question altogether._

_I appreciate the photos of the house and am glad to know you’re settled and doing well. Of course Matt feels a bit frustrated; who wouldn’t, after that kind of transition? I’m certain it will pass. You should encourage him to take could take up a hobby. Ten-pin bowling or somesuch. Come to think of it, why did we never have a Destiny bowling team? It seems like a relatively simple game to manufacture. At any rate– under_ _no_ _circumstances_ _allow him to get involved in home improvement projects; it always ends badly._ _What_ _colour is he proposing to paint the porch?_

_Perhaps he could raise chickens. People raise chickens in California. I mean in their backyards. He could name some after the science team; it would be extremely amusing to see Brody, Volker, and Park peeping around, getting offended and puffing out their feathers._

_Remind me to bring you some of McKay’s notes about new applications for Kac-Moody algebras. I suspect you’d be interested in them._

 

_EY_

* * *

The planet was unusually far from its star, which resulted in very dim sunlight, and a chilly, late-autumn feel. Young wished they’d been assigned winter gear. He was shivering in his jacket, and he had a bad feeling as he peered through the strangely-shaped trees, trying to make something out through the thin cold light.

“I mean,” McKay was saying, “ground-based sensors picked up a fleet that stayed in orbit for _twelve hours_ three days ago, so even if they’ve gone—“

“Yeah, I know, Rodney,” Sheppard said, sounding impatient. “But I’m talking about the here and now. Do we have any reason to believe they left behind some kind of strike force?”

“Our sensor array got either destroyed or disabled, so we’ve got nothing. No data.”

“What about small ship-to-ground vessels?” Young asked.

“Um, hello, our computer system is out? Assessment of ship-to-ground traffic requires pulse-doppler signal processing, and I can’t do FFTs in my _head_.”

Sheppard sighed.

“You always were shit at Fourier transforms,” Young said absently.

“ _Excuse_ me?” McKay hissed. “Did _Nick_ tell you that? He’s such a _brat_ about anything mathematical, and it was just _one time_ that—“

He broke off as Sheppard elbowed him in the ribs.

“Oh. Right,” he said uncertainly. “Well, anyway. I only had the raw data. So I don’t can’t tell you.”

“I don’t like this,” Sheppard said. He was, like Young, casting a wary eye over the high, spindly trees. “I think we should move out.”

“Yeah,” Young said edgily.

In the distance, there was the sound of weapons fire.

“Well, that would be the reason I wasn’t liking this,” Sheppard said, sounding resigned. “That sounds like Genii tech to me.”

“Do we think it’s the Radimer faction or the Atom Cultists?” Young asked.

“I think Radim’s people don’t have a reason to be anywhere near this planet, so—“

Young caught a flash of movement far-off, between the huge black blossoms that grew on the forest’s creeper vines.

“Get down!” he shouted.

The air split apart in sprays of bullets— the standard U.S. Air Force variety, and the strange Genii manufacture that made a high-pitched whistle as they flew.

Young was covering McKay, trying to back him behind a squat broad-branched bush. Sheppard was focused on taking out the hostiles, so he didn’t see the shot that was coming for him. Young was the one who saw it, and he acted without thinking, shoving Sheppard behind him and taking the hit.

There was a moment when he could hear the bullet, almost as though it was singing to him. Time slowed, and he thought that the song was beautiful, and he was suffused with a profound relief.

The impact was on the right side of his ribcage. Almost immediately he felt another bullet, maybe more than one, strike his leg. He couldn’t say which leg; he was falling, and then he was on the ground, with no memory of landing. The world spun over him. It was twilight, he thought; a cool, woody, smoke-smelling twilight, and that should have been peaceful, but Sheppard was saying frantically, “Everett! Everett! —Oh, shit, McKay— get him—“ and someone was dragging him, and pain was running through him like a bright hot gnawing animal, cheerfully ripping away at his flesh.

He blinked, and Sheppard was kneeling over him, pressing bloodied hands to his abdomen.

McKay was yelling into a radio, “We need an evac! We need an evac _now!_ ”

“You’re fine,” Sheppard said, his voice ragged. “You’re going to be fine.”

His face was the color of milk.

“I thought you couldn’t touch me,” Young said vaguely.

“We’re going to get you out of here,” Sheppard said.

“Leave me here. Go for the gate.”

“I’m not _leaving_ you here!” Sheppard said, sounding anguished.

“Please. I want you to,” Young said.

Somewhere nearby, he could hear the bullets singing. They sounded lonely.

He closed his eyes.

* * *

He woke briefly in the Atlantis infirmary. Sheppard was sitting beside him. There were dark circles under his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, when he saw Young’s eyelids flicker.

“For what?” Young asked drowsily. “Where’s Nick?”

* * *

And then later, when they were sending him through the gate, Sheppard’s hand rested on his forehead.

“Everett,” he said softly. “Take care of yourself, okay?”

Young blinked at him hazily. He was aware of a tremendous sense of pressure, the agonized city pleading with him not to go.

“It’s so alone,” he murmured.

“I know,” Sheppard said. “I know it is.”


	71. Chapter 71

**July**

“I’m glad to see you’re up and about,” Dr. Mackenzie said. “How long did they stick you with the cane for?”

“Till I don’t need it anymore,” Young said. “Apparently that could be two months, and it could be forever. Depends on how the rehab goes.”

“You seem to be taking this awfully well.”

“That ought to be a good thing, right?”

“Dr. Lam said she told you that for ninety-five percent of people, the Genii bullet you took to the femur is a career-ending injury.”

“I do seem to recall her saying that.”

“She said you didn’t seem concerned.”

“I was sick of Atlantis anyway. And I’m getting too old for the field.”

“Colonel Sheppard expressed concerns about your mental state.”

“Did he,” Young said.

“Why do you think he would do that?”

“I guess you’d have to ask him.”

“He reported that despite your lack of the Ancient gene, you were able to utilize Ancient technology. In fact, he seemed to think you had a stronger propensity for it than he himself did.”

Young said nothing.

“Dr. Rush’s genome was modified by the Destiny to resemble that of an Ancient, wasn’t it?”

Young said, “I guess you’d have to ask _him_.”

“Difficult to do.”

“Not my problem.”

“Isn’t it?” Mackenzie asked.

“Nice to know we’re picking up exactly where we left off,” Young said.

* * *

On his way out of the Mountain, he saw Daniel Jackson leaning against the wall beside the outside door. He looked older than the AI’s imitation of him on Destiny. Faint lines had started to cross his forehead, as though he furrowed his brow a lot.

“Colonel Young,” he said when Young pushed the door open.

“Jackson,” Young greeted him.

“I heard you were on base today. I was wondering if you wanted to go get a drink.”

“Not particularly,” Young said. “Were you lying in wait for me?”

Jackson had the good grace to look guilty. “Maybe a little. I need to talk to you about something.”

“No.”

“No?”

“I’m not really a talkative guy. I come equipped with a finite allotment of verbalizations, and I’m afraid you find me at a moment when I’ve exhausted that allotment for the day.”

Jackson looked at him for a moment and didn’t say anything. Then: “They declared him dead,” he said. “A few days ago. They do it after ninety days.”

Young leaned against his cane, squinting into the high summer sunlight. Like most summer days in Colorado, this one was bright and hot. He had sunglasses in his pocket, but no desire to put them on. There was something cleansing about being scoured with electromagnetic radiation. It felt like it was stripping his skin away.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Jackson said into the silence. “I’ve been declared dead— so many times. I’ve lost count. Even Jack's thought I was dead. But I just— hadn’t come back yet.”

Young nodded.

“The point is—“ Jackson looked away. “I’m his next of kin,” he said. “And executor of his will. I mean, such as it is. He pretty much just left everything to me.”

“ _You_ ,” Young said, a bemused note breaking through the flatness of his affect.

“Yes.” Jackson looked down. “It was a last-minute thing, before he left for Icarus; it was— see, what happened was—“

“It was David,” Young said. He closed his eyes. “Originally it was David.”

Jackson nodded haltingly. “They were— uh, close. And then, after, I was the only other person he really—“ His voice faded away to nothing. “I’m going to sign it all over to you.”

“Don’t,” Young said.

“You should have it. It should be you.”

“I don’t want it.”

“It’s a lot,” Jackson said, ignoring him. “It’s— his wife was very wealthy. And when she— so.”

“I don’t want the money,” Young said.

“There’s a house in San Francisco. There’s personal things. Please. It should be you.”

Young didn’t say anything.

“There’s some paperwork,” Jackson said. “I’ll send it to your apartment. You’ll have to go to California. I take it you’re still on convalescent leave?

“Yeah,” Young said.

“When do you think you’ll be better?”

Jackson’s eyes were soft, quizzical, slightly magnified by his glasses.

“I don’t know,” Young said.

* * *

**August**

California in August was cooler than he’d expected, at least in the shadow of the hills. He’d flown into San Francisco and rented a car to drive to Vallejo, not mentioning to the clerk at the car rental place that he hadn’t driven a motor vehicle in years. He managed to avoid traffic accidents for long enough to make it across the glowing blue bay to a shady street with a house he recognized from Chloe’s photos. She was standing on the square porch, holding a glass of lemonade and looking for him.

“Hey, stranger,” he said, levering himself out of the car and leaning painfully on his cane. He crossed the street to her. “Long time no see. I didn’t realize you were serious about cutting your hair.”

She had chopped it off neatly at her shoulders. She had bangs now.

She was standing there, looking stricken as she stared at him.

“I did it to piss my mom off,” she said in a small voice. “Yours is so _long_.”

Young reached up and raked a hand through his mess of curls. “Yeah,” he said. “I keep forgetting to cut it.”

“And your _leg_. And you look so _thin_.”

“Temporary setback,” Young said. “I was in the infirmary for a while.” He limped up the steps of the porch. “What, I don’t get a hug?”

She set the glass of lemonade down and threw her arms around him. She whispered, “I wasn’t sure if you’d want to be touched.”

He pressed his palm against her back and shut his eyes. “I’m still me,” he said. “That hasn’t changed.”

“Yeah,” she said, pulling away and blinking rapidly. “Of course. Of course it hasn't.”

Then Scott came out onto the porch, and it was time for manly handshakes and a lot of slapping each other on the back, and Young had to hear all about the cluelessness of the SGC’s recruiting unit, most of whom had never been on gate teams, and how much paperwork was involved in the whole operation, and the tediousness of it. Scott very carefully didn’t ask questions about Atlantis, which Young supposed meant he’d been warned. Instead he very proudly walked Young through everything he’d cooked for dinner: balsamic-glazed pork chops and butternut squash risotto, with tiramisu chilling in the fridge for dessert.

“Wow,” Young said, taken aback.

“Yeah, I kind of took up cooking. _Someone_ had to. Chloe’ll go all day without eating; she’s almost as bad as—“ He stopped.

“You can say his name,” Young said. “I won’t go up in a puff of smoke.”

“Right,” Scott said uncomfortably, looking away. “Of course.”

* * *

After dinner, Young sat out on the porch polishing off a bottle of white wine with Chloe while Scott did the dishes. Mourning doves were hooting through the dusk.

“This is nice,” Young said. “Peaceful.”

“It still feels strange,” Chloe said. “Not real.”

“How are things going with the— testing, and school, and everything?”

“Oh, you know.” She looked down at her wine glass. “Getting better, I suppose. I drive over to Travis, and they ask me if I felt like torturing and murdering anyone this month, and I say, only the guy who kept hitting on me at the farmer’s market last week, and— they don’t really appreciate that kind of humor. And they take swabs and stick me with needles and look at my brain waves. It’s funny how hospitals make you feel like you’re not a real person. Like you’re an interesting rock or a lizard. I thought that’s what I was trying _not_ to be.”

“Yeah,” Young said. “I get the brain wave thing too. They keep thinking one of these days they’ll figure out what’s wrong with me.”

“It’s always something _wrong_ with you,” Chloe said. “That’s what I don’t like about it.” She was still looking down. After a while she said, “I had orientation last week. For school. It made me feel really old. Some of the people in my cohort said they’d never met anybody in the military before. I didn’t know what to say to that.”

Young gave her a crooked smile. “Yes, well, it’s nice to know that _some_ areas of academia remain uninfiltrated by the American military-industrial complex.”

She flinched.

There was a short silence.

He shut his eyes. “Sorry,” he said.

“It’s not getting better, is it?”

“No. I think it’s probably getting worse.”

“We heard about Atlantis. That you—“ She paused. “That you read Ancient now. And the rest.”

“ _Itave. Et duened id fathlaor. Utrillisimas habilitas.”_

Chloe gave him a wavering smile. “ _Accentod eos fathlaso,_ ” she said softly. “ _Eod defuevam.”_

“Yeah,” Young whispered.

“Sometimes when I read your emails from Atlantis, you—“ Her voice cracked. “You sounded so much like him. I knew that something, that something was— But I didn't say anything. Should I have said something?"

Young looked down. "I don't know," he said softly. "I don't think it would've made a difference. I don't think it's the kind of thing you can fix."

"No," she said quietly.

There was a short pause.

"I liked it," she said unsteadily. "That's terrible, right? I liked it, because for a little while I could pretend— Not that I wouldn’t— I mean, it’s not that I wanted you to not be you, it’s not that I didn’t want _your_ emails; I just— and I _know_ it’s bad, I know I’m selfish; I can’t imagine what this is like for you— I mean I _can_ imagine what it’s like; I really can; that’s why I _hate_ myself, but I just needed someone— I needed someone to tell me I was okay. I miss him _so much._ ”

Young was silent for a while. He watched a june bug flit against the screen door, exploring the mesh intently, as though it wanted in.

“It's not terrible," he said in a low voice. "Don't you think I— it's like he won’t die. He won’t _die_. And I don’t _want_ him to die, _God_ , so how am I supposed to— But I can’t  _live_ like this."

She looked away and took a long sip of her wine. “It just makes me think—“ she said almost inaudibly, “that he would _never_ have left you like this. He _must_ have thought he could come back. He wouldn’t have done this to you.”

“I don’t see why not. He did everything else.” Young stared out at the pale houses in the gathering dark. “He wasn’t a good person, Chloe.”

“Maybe not,” she whispered. “But he loved you.”

Young said nothing.

“He _did_ ,” Chloe said, anguished. “He _did._ ” She rose, agitated, pushing her hair back behind her ears, her face locked in an agony of emotion.

“It doesn’t make a difference,” Young said shortly. “He’s dead. Or, you know—“ He looked down at his own hands. “Mostly.”

She stood there underneath the porchlight, oblivious to the moths that fluttered above her, paper-winged and drawn to the yellow lamp. The wine glass in her hand was trembling. “I don’t believe that,” she said. “I don’t believe that.”

Young sighed. He hooked a hand over his shoulder and massaged an ache that was beginning at the back of his neck. “That’s why you pushed the wedding back, isn’t it?” he said tiredly. “That’s the real reason.”

Chloe averted her eyes almost angrily and didn’t say anything.

“Chloe—“

“I _know._ I keep waiting for Matt to say how stupid I am. I know I’m stupid. I know I am. I know he’s not going to just show up and—“ Her breath hitched. She didn’t finish the sentence. “I said February or March. I started shopping for wedding planners. So I’m not in denial. I’m _not._ ”

“I know you’re not,” Young said. “And you’re not stupid. I just don’t want you to end up like—“ He fell silent. “Things haven’t been going well, Chloe,” he whispered. “They really haven’t.”

“No,” Chloe said softly. “I didn’t think so.”

She came and sat beside him on the edge of the porch, tucking her hand into his hand.

They were facing the warm and cheery windows of the house. Inside, Scott was washing dishes. The radio was playing country hits.

“You could stay,” Chloe said after a moment. “You could stay for a while. Matt wouldn’t mind. We’d both like it. ”

Young shook his head. “I’ve got some business in San Francisco. I’ve got to— I inherited everything. It’s a long story. I want you guys to have some of it. I thought maybe I could pay for the wedding.”

“My mother’s paying.”

“Or— I don’t know. Your tuition.”

“That would be nice. But—“ She regarded him, worried. “You should keep it, you know. In case you end up leaving the service.”

“I’ll have my pension.”

“But you never know what might happen. You’re talking about the rest of your life.”

Young tightened his hand around hers.

“Right,” he said. “The rest of my life.”

* * *

**September**

It took him a week to work up the courage to visit Berkeley. He stayed in San Francisco in the meanwhile, drifting listlessly through tourist attractions and running through his supply of Vicodin. The city was familiar and unfamiliar. It seemed haunted by pockets of memory that weren’t his, like Destiny shadowed with the ghosts of its million-year past. There was a bookstore where he went straight to the Computer Sciences section. A restaurant where he didn’t need to open the menu before ordering.

He went to the Castro once, because he thought he ought to; wasn’t that the sort of thing you were supposed to do, if you were…? He didn’t know how to behave. He felt like he was at a school dance, standing awkwardly on the sidelines. For most of the afternoon, he sat outside a cafe, and then went to a bar as the night came on. He’d thought of trying to pick someone up, but couldn’t bring himself to do it; not even when a dark-eyed man with a wry smile nudged his shoulder and said, “Ex-military, huh? I can always spot them.”

What he was amazed by was the glut of it all, the headiness of so many men together, like the Air Force but at the same time so dramatically unlike it: men touching each other, casual hands on bodies, soft and intimate and unafraid. He had grown up in a world where men didn’t touch each other. Maybe he’d thought that in the Air Force that would change. And it had, a little, in a way; you could be close, there, but still without touching.

He would have liked to take a man back to his hotel room just to hold him. That was all he wanted. Not even sex.

Since he’d gotten back to Earth, the pain in his leg sometimes woke him at night, and before he’d even opened his eyes his chest was tightening with a panic attack. Only afterwards, when he’d convinced himself he wasn’t dying, and managed to lever himself up and change the sheets he’d soaked with sweat— after he’d thrown up, sometimes— could he trace the fear back to the penetrating sense of _wrongness_ that was triggered by the unexpected absence in his bed.

He didn’t know how to articulate his desires to a stranger. _I lost someone, and he was me, and he was my lover. He’s gone, and he won’t go away. He didn’t love me, and I can’t live without him._

_There's not enough of me left. I used to be more than this._

* * *

The outside of Rush’s house was neatly kept. Young supposed that the yardwork payments must have been automatically drawn from an account. The garden was flourishing, bees hanging heavy over the flowers. But presumably Gloria’s orchids, left indoors, were dead. She’d’ve killed him for that; she’d always harbored a suspicion that he would forget to care for them during one of her long trips. You can barely care for yourself, she’d said; you _are_ one of my orchids. He’d rather liked the idea. He had been content to be that: another rare flower blooming under the warmth of her affection.

Or, rather, Rush had been content to be that.

Young removed a loose brick and collected the spare key from behind it.

He didn’t want to be here.

But he let himself in.

The house was filled with dust, a gray and ghost-like substance that overlay it. The appliances were still humming. A glass sat on a kitchen counter, fingerprints still visible on it.

In the music room, the photocopied pages of Mozart’s fourth violin concerto sat on a sturdy iron stand. Gloria’s violin lay in its open case. The strings were broken. Young touched the autumn-colored wood of its body as he passed.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” he murmured. “He should have taken care of it.”

It would have to be sold. Presumably the lawyer Camile had found for him would take care of that. He didn’t intend to come back, once he’d locked the door behind him.

Rush’s study was exactly as he remembered. No one had ever erased the board. A spray of pens still lay spilled across the desktop and the oriental rug. The blade of the boxcutter gleamed in the light from the window. Young touched his own arm, recalling the impulse to cut the tracker out of him.

David had stood just there. He had said it was what Gloria would have wanted. He had taken Nick away, and Nick had never come back.

Young opened the desk drawers and sifted through a stack of scribbled-in notebooks. There was one with some ideas about Yang-Mills theory that he wanted to talk to Chloe about— he thought she’d be interested in its applications for four-dimensional manifolds. Another notebook contained half-formed thoughts on exponential time algorithms. He took that one as well. There was no point in wasting good work.

In the living room, he found a small photo of Rush tucked into a plain black frame. He didn’t want to look at it. But Chloe would like it. He put it in the paper sack he’d brought.

His head was starting to hurt.

He’d intended to pick up a few more items. Some volumes of Wittgenstein, a selection of out-of-print CDs, a particularly beloved fountain pen. It took him a while to track down the last one, which was on a table in the music room. He frowned at it, wondering why he’d left it there, and his eyes strayed to the piano.

He recognized it. Of course he did. It was the Bechstein that had accompanied them from Princeton. It was one of the few things that he had ever allowed Gloria to buy for him, because he had loved it so much, and because he had been able to tell himself that she was not doing it for so unreliable a reason as love, but rather so that he could accompany her at her standard.

He recognized it because he had taken it apart with a sledgehammer.

He sat heavily on the bench.

“God,” he whispered, agonized. “There’s no way out, is there? There’s no way to get rid of it.”

He raised his hands to the keyboard. The pads of fingers left prints in the dust. He could tell from the first note that it was out of tune, but not as badly as it should have been.

He didn't know how to play the piano. And he had learned to play the piano in the basement of a church in Oxford. It had smelt of incense and of damp, and the piano had been wonky, a cheap wheeled upright. One of the first pieces he had learnt to play was this: Chopin’s Waltz No. 7 in C# Minor, a piece that teetered always on the precipice of being happy or sad, without ever resolving into either. It was imprisoned in a melancholy all its own, an inability to ever leave the phantom rooms of the past.

The notes were wrenched out of him like nails drawn from nail beds under a torturer’s hand.

When he had finished playing, he pushed himself shakily away from the keyboard. The world lurched around him. He had to lean against the bench or he would have collapsed.

The dust in the room was making his eyes water. He blinked rapidly, the black-and-white of the keys blurring.

“Fuck you,” he whispered in an unsteady voice. “Fuck you anyway.”

When he had locked the front door of the house behind him, he stopped to squint at the California sun and light a cigarette.

* * *

**October**

“I can’t accept this,” Greer said, looking at the check incredulously.

“Of course you can. It’s easy. You just take it to your bank branch. I hear that nowadays you can even stick the thing in the ATM. Amazing what you miss, being gone for a few years.”

Greer rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean, sir.”

“I’m not your commanding officer anymore.”

“No, you’re not,” Greer said. “In fact, I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about you maybe leaving the service.”

“Don’t you people have anything better to do than talk about me?”

“Nope. That’s all we do, all day long. We go to alien planets, and as soon as we get there, it’s like, Did you hear what Colonel Young had for dinner last night?”

“I was aware that the depredations of the U.S. military included a degree of unfettered espionage, but I hadn’t imagined my love of butter chicken was reckoned a state secret urgent to surveil.”

Greer cast a uncertain glance at him.

There was a pause.

“Just take the check,” Young said. “It’s his money. He would have wanted you to have it.”

“Tell you what. I’ll think about it if you tell me why you’re thinking of cashing out.”

Young shrugged and let his half-drunk beer dangle against the concrete floor of the balcony. “I’m old,” he said. “I’m crippled. I’m not who I was.”

“Yeah,” Greer said softly. “I’m getting that.”

“Anyway, I might still do some consulting work.”

“I heard that too. I heard you cooked up some kind of fancy computer dialing program while you were in the infirmary. That you read Ancient now, better than just about anyone in the Program.”

“Yes, well, their standards are frankly abysmal.”

Greer looked at him levelly, the way Chloe hadn’t been willing to, though there was a tightness at the corners of his eyes that spoke of pain. “Don’t do this,” he said. “This isn’t what he wanted.”

“He didn’t give a fuck about me,” Young said.

“That’s not true.”

“He left me,” Young said. “He left me. He _left_ me.”

He hadn’t ever said it out loud. Now that he’d started, he found it hard to stop.

“He left me,” he said again. “He _left_ me, and you know what? He didn’t even have the fucking guts to just fucking _leave_ me; he had to set it up so that _I’d_ leave him; I’d be unconscious, but I’d fucking _do_ it; I’m not even angry, I’m astounded; you’ve got to admire the sheer fucking primary school nerve of it, the life-or-death equivalent of _Why are you hitting yourself?_ Nothing could have been more bloody predictable, more purely _him_. He always had to be the victim—“

“You have to _fight_ this,” Greer said.

“—and I understand that; I mean, who’s better equipped to fucking understand? But let’s not pretend that he had the fucking _capacity_ to fucking _care_ about people, because he didn’t. He _didn’t._ He was a cold-hearted fucking _bastard.”_

Greer regarded him evenly. “Is that you saying all this,” he asked quietly, “or him?”

* * *

**November**

“You look like hell, Everett,” J.D. said. “What have you been up to? You were awfully quiet over dinner in there. You know that for about a year, Mom really thought you must be dead?”

“They would’ve told you if I was dead,” Young said. “They tend to do that.”

He stared out at the inch or so of snow that covered the wide yard of his parents’ house. It looked almost blue on the trees in the deep twilight glow.

“And since when do you smoke?” J.D. said.

Young exhaled a particularly lung-squeezing drag and ashed his cigarette onto the deck. “Picked it up on my last deployment,” he said. “Which I can’t tell you about, before you ask.”

“It’s bad for you.”

“The best things always are.”

“That’s one hell of a life philosophy,” J.D. said. He looked over at Young. “You pick _that_ up on your last deployment?”

“Yeah,” Young said. “More or less.”

J.D. nodded. “And you’re not going to tell me what happened?”

“Nothing happened.”

“Bullshit. Even I can tell you’ve changed. And I don’t just mean the limp, or the—“ He gestured. “I mean, shit, are you too cheap to get a haircut?”

“I’ve decided I like it long,” Young said mildly.

“What’s the Air Force going to say about that? You’re going to run out of leave eventually.”

“I’m not sure I’m going back.”

J.D. turned and stared at him. “Are you _serious?_ ”

Young took a drag of his cigarette.

“The Air Force is your _life_.”

“I’ve got other things in my life now.”

“Yeah?” J.D. folded his arms. “Like what?”

Young tilted his head back and looked up at the sky. Even with the faint light from inside the house, he could see the cloud of the Milky Way. That vast galaxy that to him, now, seemed so small. Its spread of stars, with coronas like the one that he had flown through, listening to the particles as they whistled against Destiny’s shields.

How could he explain what he had to explain to someone who hadn’t flown that trajectory? How could he make it interpretable to someone who’d never left Earth? That had always been the problem, he thought; even back before he’d known about the stargate; he’d felt that he was moving through dimensions that remained largely closed, invisible to the universe at large. No. That wasn’t what he meant. _He_ hadn’t felt like that. Or only since Nick.

That didn't make it less true.

“Well,” he said to J.D. after a moment. “I’m gay. Just to put that out there. And I’m really into math. Also, technically I think I might be a millionaire, but looking at the paperwork makes me want to throw up, so I generally let my lawyer handle it.”

J.D. was silent for a long time.”You’re _gay?_ ” he said at last.

Young stared at the moon over the dark trees. “Yup.”

“Are you sure you’re not just— like—“

“What?”

J.D. shifted uncomfortably. “It just kind of sounds like a lot of things are up in the air. You wouldn’t be the first guy to hit a certain age, you know, things didn’t work out with Emily, you’re frustrated, you think you want something different—“

“J.D.,” Young said.

“Wasn’t there that blonde girl? Wasn’t that the whole reason you—”

“J.D.,” Young said again. “I like men. Sexually.”

J.D. coughed uncomfortably. “Wow. Okay. Too much information.”

Young took another drag off his cigarette. He reflected with a sense of distance that he felt like in a minute he was going to start laughing or, more likely, hit something. It had been a mistake to come here.

There was a long silence.

“You’re not at all curious about the million dollars?” Young asked.

“Maybe don’t tell Mom,” J.D. said.

“About the million dollars?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” Young said.

“Or just wait till you’re— you know— sure.”

“Maybe you could tell her after I’m gone.”

“Pretty sure that wouldn’t get you out of talking to her about it.”

“Right,” Young said. “Right. Of course not.”

He shut his eyes. When he opened them again, he was struck by the cleanness of the snowfall, how it seemed to have wiped away every mark on the earth.

“Hey,” he said. “Do you remember when we were little and we used to bring that old tent out here? Pretend we were camping? With marshmallows and lanterns?”

J.D. gave him a confused look. “Yeah, of course. What does that have to do with—“

“Those are some of the happiest memories of my life. I always felt really safe in that tent. Even though you must’ve told me that fucking ghost steer story about a hundred times, trying to scare me.”

Now J.D. just looked uncertain. “Ev, why are you telling me this?”

“I thought you should know.” Young clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m probably going to take off. I’ve got a meeting in Colorado tomorrow. I’ll go in and say goodnight to Mom and Pop.”

He was aware of J.D.’s bewildered eyes on him as he left. But he didn’t know what to say. He’d tried. He’d made an effort.

He should have let them go on thinking he was dead. It wasn’t, after all, so far from the truth.

* * *

**December**

He had not thought he would come here.

The road into the mountains was lined with snow.

He had driven up from Santa Fe, which was decked out for Christmas. The air there was dry and very thin. He’d gotten a nosebleed the first day and touched his nose, taken aback, then stared down at his fingers: the bright stain. He’d wondered what it meant. Of course it didn’t mean anything; it was just the altitude. But it seemed like some kind of message from the mute inner parts of his brain.

A warning, maybe. Don’t go. Don’t do this.

But he pressed on, because he had done everything else. And it had hurt. But it hadn’t hurt enough.

He’d gotten better at driving in the months that he’d been back, but he was still glad that ski traffic had left the roads clear. The climb upwards was perilous where curves looked out over mesas. He rolled down his window and breathed in the air: hard with frost and smelling of pine. The smell was as he’d remembered: wintry and slightly touched by the wilderness. There was a silence to it, and a remoteness that he liked.

This was a last-minute trip, and in fact he’d been so drunk when he made the reservations that later he couldn’t remember the name of his hotel in Santa Fe. So he’d only been able to book the cabin for one night. But that was all right, he thought. He wasn’t actually planning to stay.

The approach wound through a thickly forested area to the shoveled parking area at the back. He had to leave the car and trudge through the thicker, powdery snow drifts to get a look at the little house from the front.

It was smaller than he remembered. Early twilight put dark red into the gold of its wood. Someone had wound Christmas garlands around the railings of the porch steps, and touched their satin ribbons as he climbed up.

The porch light was on, as though someone had left it on for him, although he knew that this wasn’t the case, or rather that it hadn’t been left on for _him_ — that he was a stranger.

The cabin looked, as it had always looked, like a place to be at home in. He supposed this was a deliberate effect. The owners had chosen furniture and objects that would contribute to this impression. A sort of generic idea of what home was supposed to be, more persuasive for people who didn’t feel at home elsewhere, or who hadn’t in a long time, at least. It had worked on him. By then he’d spent years in the military. He could blame it on that. But there’d been other reasons.

Now, entering, he remembered the sense of warmth he felt, but found it difficult to summon again. He trailed his hand over the leather couch, with its red Navajo blanket. The living room seemed narrow. The fire wasn’t lit.

The bedroom was half the size he’d made it, though it had all the Western accents that had annoyed Rush so much. The unfinished wood chair, the tin frame of the mirror, the polished horns hung on the wall. He sat for a moment on the edge of the bed where they’d—

He walked back out into the hall. No paintings. He had laughed at their spindly odd figures.

He’d forgotten how few rooms were in the house.

He turned a lamp on and sat on the couch in silence while outside snow fell through the blue dusk.

So much was missing. The music room, the piano, the stereo, the office, the chalkboard, the paintings, the math journals, the chess set; a breakfast room he’d thought had been part of the original cabin, but must have been drawn from another memory—

This wasn't his house.

This was a house sized for someone the size that he had been when he’d come here five years back or more, quiet and sturdy and still following the rules. Now he couldn’t not make an account of how much was not there. How much he’d changed without knowing it.

 _I don't fit anymore_ , he thought.  _I can't. I won't._

A wave of claustrophobia struck him suddenly with an intensity that made him feel sick.

He had to stagger outside. His head was swimming.

He tried leaning against the porch rail and lighting a cigarette, but that didn’t help. He felt within himself a huge rearing desolation that threatened to uncoil out of his throat, like an an actual creature in his stomach that he had to fight hard to keep back. The smoke didn’t pacify it.

His phone rang, breaking the silence.

He fumbled it out in his shaking hand.

“Yeah,” he said unevenly, without looking at the display.

“Hey, stranger!” Chloe’s voice said brightly. “Merry Christmas!”

“Is it Christmas? Or—“ He’d already forgotten. He tried to make his voice sound normal. “Christmas Eve?”

“Please tell me you know what day it is.”

“Temporal sequencing is hard for me; you know that.”

“Well, it is, in fact, Christmas Eve.”

“Are you calling from DC?”

“No; Matt and I decided to stay here. We had some friends over.”

“That’s good,” Young said, closing his eyes painfully. “That’s good. You’re making friends. I think that’s— excellent groundwork for forming the interpenetrating webs of spiders that will govern your academic experience from here on out.”

“You’re always so negative about academia!”

“I speak whereof I know.”

She said teasingly, “ _Tu araneos es?”_

 _“Semper plu wespa fuevam,_ ” he said, feeling his mouth from a crooked half-smile that had never been his own.

 _“Cresdo quod apis fuevas,”_ she said. _“Apis operosos. Quomodo deicetor—_ a busy little bee?”

She sounded tipsy. He suspected they wouldn’t have been having this conversation if she hadn’t been.

“You’re a very irritating girl,” he said, trying not to sound fond.

Chloe laughed. “Anyway,” she said, “if you think I’m new to spiders, you obviously haven’t met my mom. She is _super_ mad that we didn’t come back to DC. She’s threatening to boycott the wedding.”

“Have you set a date?”

“Yeah, March 4th. It’s a Sunday. We’re just about to get the invitations made. It’s going to be in Monterey, but obviously most people are coming from DC or Colorado, so we wanted to make sure to ask them in plenty of time.”

“Monterey?” he said. “A beach wedding?”

“Not actually _on_ the beach. I know you—“ she hesitated. “I know you don’t like the water.”

He said quietly, “Don’t worry about me.”

Without meaning to, he had walked away from the house and out towards the woods. It was quiet. There was a continuous sound of rustling snow. In the background of the phone call he could hear the clatter of dishes, and laughter, and overlapping voices: the friendly commotion of warm domestic sounds.

“I do worry about you,” Chloe said.

“I know. I know you do.”

Young found a sloping snowdrift and sank down against it. He held the phone to the side of his face and let his head fall back, staring up at the far-flung spread of stars that was visible through the thin mountain air.

He felt as far away from Chloe as he was from any one of those stars. Farther. He wondered if that was how Rush had felt on Destiny, at the end.

Alone.

“I really want you to be there,” Chloe said. There was an uncertainty in her voice, a faint quaver, as though she’d picked up on a shadow of despair he hadn’t meant to let slip. “At the wedding. You’ll be there, won’t you?”

“Of course I will.”

“I was actually wondering if— I mean, you don’t have to, but— I was going to ask if you would give me away.”

Young closed his eyes. “Yeah,” he managed, forcing the word out. “Yeah, kiddo, I’d love to.”

“Okay,” Chloe said softly, sounding relieved. “Good. I should let you get back to whatever you’re doing. I know you’re probably with your family.“

“Yeah,” Young said noncommittally.

“I just wanted to tell you Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas,” Young said, his throat tight.

When the call had ended, he tucked his phone mechanically back into his coat. He watched his breath form clouds in the air. He was amazed at the visible evidence that he was alive, when so much of his subjective experience suggested this was not true.

“She thinks I’m you, you know,” he whispered to the dark. “But I’m not you. I’m no one. I'm not me either. I don’t know who I am.”

The dark didn't answer.

“Sometimes I wish I could be you. I wish that I _was_ you, because if I was you, if I was you then I wouldn’t—"

He had to roll onto his side and curl his knees up to his chest, trying to fight back a wave of grief so nauseating that he felt he couldn’t keep it inside. He thought he would throw up, or else it would split his skin.

“I wouldn’t fucking miss you so much,” he choked out. “I wouldn’t have to miss you. Not if I wasn’t _me_ anymore. And Chloe, she loves you. She _loves_ you. I. _I._ ”

He shoved his face down into the snow, heaving an awful, wet, strangled sound. Clinically some part of him observed, from a distance, that he sounded like men sounded when they were close to death. He should know. He'd spent an awful lot of time with men close to death.

He was shaking, his whole body trembling with something more than cold.

"I'm not a person without you," he managed, agonized. "I don't think I was a person when I was _with_ you.  _We_ were a person. I wasn't  _half_ of a person; it's not that easy; all the edges got blurred, and now I don't know how to even be half a person; it's like I'm just— fucking walking around with pieces ripped out of my body, because you were supposed to  _be_ here, you  _bastard_ ; you were supposed to be  _here_ , and you were supposed to be  _part_ of me;how the fuck am I supposed to be  _me_ alone when we're a  _two-person fucking endeavor_ and it's not supposed to  _work_  like that? I shouldn't even be  _able_ to miss you, you  _motherfucker_ ; that's not how it's supposed to  _work_."

He was aware that he was crying.

"You don't get to make me part _you_ , you don't get to make me  _part of_ you and then fuck off forever, and guess what, if I'm part  _you_ then that means I've got a goddamn  _workaround_ in my pocket, and since I'm part you that means it's going to  _suck_ , but it's going to keep me alive for at least a little bit longer, and that's all you want, right? You want me  _alive_. That's all that matters. Nothing else. Nothing.  _Nothing._ "

He shut his eyes.

He had always pictured his consciousness as a house, a sort of structure with various rooms, walls, a floor. There was nothing beneath that floor now. Not even darkness. He had never really known what nothing meant before he'd woken up on Earth.

But the visible parts of the house were not all that was there.

Now he reached deep into his head, clawing with bare fingertips against the battered walls of his own insides, scraping away at what remained of himself until he felt his hands were bleeding, until he’d torn through the skin of his mind, but it was a relief, it was _good_ , because underneath that eroding layer of plaster he could see the Ancient-style supports: sharp and elegant and scathing and so much, _so much_ what he wanted.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed through his tears. “But you understand, right? I have to. I  _have_ to."

He couldn’t erase the infrastructure of himself. But he could reduce it to tattered ruins. He could pull those silver columns forwards, into the light, where they could be part of him, where they could _be_ him. They were anxious and spiky and electric. They felt like Rush. Maybe they were Rush's ghost. They were all that was left. And Young was capable of keeping them alive.

Gradually something— _shifted._

He lay like that for a while. His breath grew steadier as his body grew more restless, a sense of nervousness settling into his flesh. His head was light and quick, and nothing had changed, nothing was better; he was still going to have to get up, he knew; he was going to have to put his hands on the ground and push until he was standing; he was going to have to limp back to his car and drive away, and it would hurt, because everything hurt, and it seemed hard, it seemed impossible, but _fuck_ impossible, everything had _always_ hurt; that was what things _did_ , and he had done them anyways, and he had pushed the pain down inside him, and he was going to push it down inside him now because that was what _he_ did, because _Rush_ would have been able to do it.

And he wasn’t— _not_ Rush. Not exactly. Not anymore.

* * *

**January**

He turned in his letter of resignation just after New Year’s, a day when the sky was bowed and white with impending snow.

He hadn’t wanted anyone to know, though he was sure that word would get around fast; the Destiny crew were inveterate gossips, the lot of them, and they had always had an _insatiable_ appetite for his personal business, moreso since he got back to Earth, and they’d insisted on staying in contact with him as though they were all that stood between him and self-murder.

Still, the barest modicum of formal politeness dictated that he personally hand his letter in. So he risked heading to the Mountain, that hulking and aesthetically unpleasant behemoth, passing through its absurd security checkpoints manned by dead-eyed soldier boys. _He_ had never been like that. There had always been something more in him, a tension waiting to be expressed, a formless potential waiting to find its outlet. Or perhaps he was self-aggrandizing a bit. Still, he was amazed that he’d tolerated the place for so long. Even the floors were marked with lines: walk here and not there, open this door and not that one. His impulse was to open _every_ door. Just because he could. Because _fuck_ them if they thought they could stop him.

He had a tedious conversation with General Landry, in which Landry espoused the usual platitudes— that he’d be missed (he wouldn’t), that he’d been a great airman (he hadn’t), that he was well liked and respected (which almost made Young laugh). They both opted to pretend it was a question of the bullet to the femur. This, Young supposed, was the gentlemanly thing to do, although he felt Landry’s eyes take in the wild untidy curls of his hair, his stooped shoulders, the uniform that didn’t really fit him, the reading glasses he’d started wearing more and more.

“You know,” Landry said, “my daughter always thought we should’ve run more tests on you. Most other people thought it was just a psych thing. We could always—“

“I think I’ll decline,” Young said. “At the risk of sounding like an utter paranoiac, I’ve always been disinclined to undergo non-compulsory quantification. I don't fancy ending up like Chloe.”

“Senator Armstrong’s daughter?” Landry frowned. “Unfortunate situation, that one.”

“Is it?” Young asked. “What happened to her was terrible, certainly; I should know, I—“ He stopped himself. “But her current situation seems far from unfortunate, save perhaps for those parts of it imposed upon her by the SGC.”

“She’s a security risk,” Landry said, giving Young a wary look.

“Yes. She is. But not for the reasons you think she is.”

“You seem to be finding retirement very liberating.”

“She’s a risk because you can’t quantify her. Because you can't categorize her. Because you don’t know what she is. It’s that fact that terrifies the medical department. Because it undermines the entire regulatory system you call security. Perhaps, if you followed the line of investigation to its extreme, you’d find that your very way of approaching the universe is flawed. That this entire building, the whole mountain, is built on nothing. _That’s_ what you’re all afraid of. _That’s_ the real risk.”

Landry looked at him without speaking.

“Sir,” Young added, belatedly.

“There’s something different about you,” Landry said. “I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

“Yes,” Young said. “There is.”

* * *

**February**

“So this is our last session,” Dr. Mackenzie said.

“I suppose it is,” Young said neutrally.

“Do you feel you’ve made any progress?”

“Should I be honest with you?”

“Oh, why start now?”

“I think you’ll find there’s a significant difference between active dishonesty and machinations designed to circumvent the truth.”

“Is there?”

“Have I said anything that’s not true?”

“You've assured me repeatedly that you're fine.”

“Yes, well. I challenge you to controvert the veracity of that statement. What evidence would you provide? I am, demonstrably, fine.”

“Are you.”

Young spread his hands.

Mackenzie said, “You certainly seem more… comfortable, somehow.”

“Less at war with myself, you might say.”

“I don’t know if I would.”

“Well, I am.”

“At peace?”

“For a given value.”

“Then perhaps you’d like to tell me something about him.”

Young didn’t say anything.

“One thing,” Mackenzie said. “You’ve managed to avoid even that much for almost a year now. Really, I should be impressed.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Who was he? What was he like?”

Young looked down at his hands. They were trembling slightly. They tended to do that, these days. Smoking helped, but nothing _really_ helped, not _really_ ; it was an inevitable consequence of the monumental pain that he exerted a tremendous amount of effort to keep contained within his body, but there was no escape from it, that pain, so he would live with his hands trembling because otherwise he could not _live._

“He was the kind of person,” he said, “that a starship could fall in love with.”

Mackenzie tilted his head, his expression oddly gentle. His gaze rested on Young.

"And what about you?" he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Itave. Et duened id fathlaor. Utrillisimas habilitas._ = Yes. And I speak it fluently. A super useful skill.  
>  _Accentod eos fathlaso. Eod defuevam._ = You have his accent. I missed it.
> 
>  _Tu araneos es?_ = Are you a spider?  
>  _Semper plu wespa fuevam_ = I was always more of a wasp.  
>  _Cresdo quod apis fuevas. Apis operosos. Quomodo deicetor—_ = I think you were a bee. A busy bee. How do you say—


	72. Last Epithalamium for Augusta Ada Byron

The beach is chilly this early in the morning, though few places in California ever get really _cold_ ; not cold the way Chloe knows it, the deep cold of East Coast winters and Destiny’s hallways in the days before it flew through a star.

She stands looking out at the ocean, which is vast and tranquil, lapping over rocks to trail against the sand. Somewhere out in its depths are sea creatures living lives she can’t imagine: slow whales emitting songs below the human auditory band, jellyfish expanding and contracting in cloud-like formations, tendrilled anemones and brittlestars clustered along the sea floor. Their world is impenetrable to her, but she likes to think about the enormity of the nonhuman things on this earth. Somehow it reassures her, maybe because she feels a certain kinship with them. Maybe because she needs to know that there is this other realm— that just because we can’t see something doesn’t mean that it’s not out there, at strange depths where it’s hard to believe anything could dwell. People used to only know the ocean by what washed up on the shoreline after it was already dead. But all along, underneath, there’d been life in the water. There had always been so much life.

She hugs her arms across her chest and bites her lip, trying hard not to cry. The wind whips at her and makes her eyes wet anyway.

She’d started crying that morning when she woke up, and she hadn’t even known why. She hadn’t even been thinking about _him_. Matt had asked her what was wrong, and she hadn’t been able to explain. “It’s just— all of it, everything; there’s so much _emotion_ , and I have to get it _out_ of me,” she’d said, and that was probably true. “It’s been a long week,” she’d said, and that was also true, and, “It’s supposed to be the best day of my _life_ ,” which was so strange, such a strange expectation.

“Yeah, I know how you feel,” Matt had said to that last one. “Not that I don’t think spending the rest of my life with you is important, because I do; Chloe, I really do, and I think— it’s important to make promises, you know? It’s important to say them out loud. It’s just a little weird to make such a big deal out of _in sickness and in health_ when I kind of already—“

And that had made her cry harder, curling around him to rest her head against his neck. “So you’re not going to leave me,” she’d managed, “if I turn into Godzilla?”

“I mean, I’d try to turn you back, especially because, isn’t Godzilla, like, really big? So you probably wouldn’t fit in the house anymore.”

“No,” she’d choked out. “And— and I’d probably trample San Francisco.”

“It’s overpriced, anyway.”

“And Berkeley.”

“I’m pretty sure most of the people you go to school with think I’m a murderer and a fascist, so—“

She’d laughed shakily.

“But I wouldn’t go looking for someone who _wasn’t_ going to turn into Godzilla. That would just seem kind of weird. I don’t know how I’d talk to her. It’d be— I don’t know. Weird. Just weird. I wouldn’t know what to say.”

“Okay,” Chloe had whispered. “Okay.”

Later, in private, she went into her office and caught sight of the little picture of Dr. Rush that Colonel Young had given her for Christmas. She didn't cry, and she was surprised she didn't cry; she thought even her eyes were surprised, because they'd screwed up in anticipation of crying. She stood there for a minute, feeling strange and confused and slightly helpless. It was as though someone else had decided she was done crying. But really she was the one who decided things, these days. No one else could do it for her, she'd discovered.

The picture had come in a box with a check for an enormous sum of money and a note that said, _It would make him happy_. The note had been in Dr. Rush’s handwriting.

Colonel Young got into town last night. He’d come to the rehearsal dinner in a blazer over a white button-down shirt, wearing glasses and raking his hair back from his face with a nervous hand. No one had commented on it, but then, no one except Matt and TJ had known him.

She doesn’t know who she means when she says _him._

* * *

They’d emailed a lot, her and Colonel Young. Even after she got deep into her schoolwork. Maybe especially then. There were things she couldn’t talk about with anyone else. Things he understood.

 _ **From:** armstrong.85@chevron-mail.gov_  
_**To:** young.201@chevron-mail.gov_

_**Subject:** >: \_

_You would not BELIEVE how involved it is to plan a wedding! Or I suppose you would. Sorry. You would know. In more than one sense. But you weren’t trying to master set theory while doing it, which, by the way, is not AT ALL the way THEY think about things, which as I’m sure you remember used to drive a certain person bonkers. I’m afraid this means Matt’s on the hook for a lot of the actual planning, but at least it’s forcing my mother to get to know him, which she had until this point RESISTED so forcefully that I almost wrote in to one of those internet advice columnists, but can you IMAGINE, “Dear Prudence, I’m the daughter of a U.S. senator, and I got engaged while I was on a top-secret military assignment in the middle of nowhere for several years, and now my mother treats my fiancé like he’s a dim-witted yokel who can’t be trusted not to embarrass us in society.” At least I could leave out the bits about the aliens. Probably._

_Anyway, I assume you’ve gotten the invitation by now, since the word on the street is that you don’t leave your apartment that much, so you have no excuse, not even if you’re doing some kind of super-advanced work on pseudorandomization or building a new naquadah reactor, which, please don’t be building a new naquadah reactor, and please don’t not leave your apartment. It’s not good for you. I worry about you, you know._

_Do you ever try to divide yourself up into what’s you and not-you? Even after I stopped being scared that I wasn’t me anymore, I kept doing that. Like it was okay that I wasn’t me, but I had to know exactly who I’d been. Maybe that’s why I don’t like wedding planning. I keep thinking, What would Chloe want? What am I supposed to want? And then I remind myself that I_ am _Chloe. And I’m supposed to be allowed to want whatever I want. I just wondered if you do that sometimes._

 

_xx Chloe_

* * *

_**From:** armstrong.85@chevron-mail.gov_  
_**To:** young.201@chevron-mail.gov_

_**Subject:** :-[_

_Advanced Set Theory is of the devil. “Chloe, I’m struggling to understand why you’re having so much trouble with this course when you tested out of Riemannian Geometry!” —Dr. Starr. I might need you to tutor me this summer. Now that you’re a grumpy old retiree, are you going to be around?_

 

_p.s. Matt is threatening to get into molecular gastronomy. Now he’s telling me not to tell you that. He says he was joking. But he wasn’t joking! He wants to make me go to some horrible place in San Francisco where the food’s supposed to be a “poem.” I don’t want my food to be a poem! I want it to be food!_

* * *

_**From:** armstrong.85@chevron-mail.gov_  
_**To:** young.201@chevron-mail.gov_

_**Subject:** <No Subject>_

_Somnievam quod is guitos essed. En stelocod opscurod fuevam et me envuenievadque ad Fatod me capievad._

_Em defuevam._

_Quisque diem._

* * *

_**From:** armstrong.85@chevron-mail.gov_  
_**To:** young.201@chevron-mail.gov_

_**Subject:** Cake!_

_They give you FREE CAKE if you’re getting married! How did I not know this? Why don’t people just pretend to be getting married all the time? AND it’s different little cakes. Matt and I went to four bakeries and got cake at ALL of them. Actually, TJ came along to one, because she was visiting, and she’s going to be in the bridal party. (I hope you don’t mind.) I was a little nervous because sometimes my taste buds are, well, you know, but I ate so much cake that I felt sick._

_When I went in for my monitoring this week, I told them that I was getting married next month. I don’t think they knew what to say. I’ve been going there for so long, but I don’t know any of them, really. I think they don’t want to get to know me because they worry about what’s going to happen if they have to kill me. You used to worry about that too. I know you did. It’s okay. He was the only one other than Matt who didn’t back away a little. I can never decide if it’s because of something good about him, like he of all people couldn’t treat someone like a dangerous experiment, or if it’s just because it never occurred to him to try and protect himself from anything._

_I think about him a lot. Is that bad? Aren’t you supposed to phase people out? Aren’t you supposed to think about them less and less? But I don’t. I think about what he would say in ridiculous situations. Sometimes it makes me laugh. So it’s not a sad remembering, not all the time._

_No one ever talks about him. It’s like he never existed. Like there’s this hole in everything where he was supposed to be. Matt’s afraid of making me upset, and when Greer comes to visit he looks at me like he wants to talk but doesn’t know how to start. I’m not a little girl. I’m not going to have a breakdown. I just want to talk about him sometimes._

 

_p.s. We’re having a vanilla cake with dark chocolate ganache, and they’re going to paint little stars and constellations all over it. I know, it’s terrible. it’s really corny. But I couldn’t just have flowers. It would have felt like someone else was getting married. Like Chloe was getting married. Not me. If you know what I mean._

 

_xx Chloe_

* * *

_**From:** armstrong.85@chevron-mail.gov_  
_**To:** young.201@chevron-mail.gov_

_**Subject:** <No Subject>_

_Do you think anyone’s ever eloped through the stargate?_

* * *

_**From:** armstrong.85@chevron-mail.gov_  
_**To:** young.201@chevron-mail.gov_

_**Subject:** Re: ?_

_No; you’ll have to read the newest paper on hyperspaces of constant mean curvature in Riemannian manifolds. I’m not going to just do the work for you! God!_

_p.s. I’m SO fed up with all this catering nonsense that I’m VERY TEMPTED to just serve protein paste as an in-joke for the fifteen or so people from Destiny who are going to be there. Do you think Matt could steal some from the base?_

* * *

_**From:** armstrong.85@chevron-mail.gov_  
_**To:** young.201@chevron-mail.gov_

_**Subject:** Re: Question_

_Yes, of course I’d love the piano, but you_ can’t _. You’ve already_ given _us a wedding gift, and it was much, much, much too much money. You should keep it. Please keep it. You play now, don’t you?_

_Greer says you’re giving lots of things away lately. He says you've put lots of the money into a fund for gifted kids. Why are you giving things away?_

_xx Chloe_

* * *

_**From:** armstrong.85@chevron-mail.gov_  
_**To:** young.201@chevron-mail.gov_

_**Subject:** <No Subject>_

_[A mock-up of the famous black-and-white National Enquirer “Bat Boy” cover; the text reads: “BAT BOY PROVES RIEMANN HYPOTHESIS!]_

_: ) : ) Haven’t heard from you! Are you sulking about the piano?_

* * *

_**From:** armstrong.85@chevron-mail.gov_  
_**To:** young.201@chevron-mail.gov_

_**Subject:** <No Subject>_

_???_

* * *

_**From:** armstrong.85@chevron-mail.gov_  
_**To:** young.201@chevron-mail.gov_

_**Subject:** <No Subject>_

_Call me!_

* * *

After a while, she hikes back up the scrubby hill from the beach. Decorations are being laid out at the resort: orchids placed on tables, because she’d taken TJ’s advice, and garlands of dark greenery, and arrangements of lilies and hyacinths in the corners of the room. She and Matt will marry on the terrace, and then throw open the doors for the reception, so that guests can eat and drink and mingle while looking out at the beach. At first she’d thought that maybe they’d actually marry on the beach, out of earshot, with their own vows, but then she didn’t know what they would say. Matt’s right: what could they possibly say that they hadn’t said already, or sometimes not even had to say— _Wilt thou have this man? Wilt thou pick up an M16 rifle to go try to rescue him from the aliens who tortured you and changed your genome? Wilt thou have this woman? Wilt thou stand by her when she turns into a monster and never ever really turns back?_ So the traditional vows are best, maybe.

That way, at least, she won’t have to worry about the hem of her dress getting wet.

She finds Matt in the front hall, milling about and looking anxious.

“Hey. I was looking for you,” he says.

“I was down on the beach, thinking about whales.”

He blinks. “Are there whales out there?”

“Lots.”

“Cool. Do you think we should, you know, invite them to the wedding?”

Chloe smiles at him. “I have a feeling whales pretty much go where they feel like. Actually, now that I think about, it must be nice to be a whale.”

“Don’t get any ideas,” he says. “Princess Godzilla.”

She kisses him briefly. “I should go get ready.”

But he catches her arm as she turns. “Have you seen Colonel Young around?”

She looks down. “Not yet.”

Neither of them says anything for a minute.

“I’m not worried about today,” Chloe says softly. “I’m worried about what happens after that.”

“Yeah,” Matt whispers.

“I keep trying to sort of trap him, I guess, in all these math problems and projects, but it’s like— it’s like trying to hold a piece of ice in your hands. It wants to get away. The world wants it to get away. You can’t help it. It’s in the wrong state.”

Matt’s mouth is downturned.

“Like something that’s supposed to be in the water,” Chloe says. “You can’t just keep trying to make it survive on land.”

“Chloe,” he says quietly, pained, because she’s come too close to saying it, the thing that no one’s allowed to say. One of the many, many things, she thinks, that Greer wants to say but can’t, when he comes to visit and the three of them sit on the porch, talking about football and Berkeley and military life, and his eyes rest on her, troubled, for a moment or two.

“That’s not what I meant,” she whispers.

She doesn’t know what she meant.

“I can’t do this right now,” she says, not very steadily. “I have to get ready.”

Matt says softly, “I know you do.”

* * *

She’d asked TJ to do her hair, because TJ’s good with hair, and Chloe didn’t want anything fancy— just a few ribbons and roses sewn in. “I’m not really a very fancy person,” she’d said, “and I sort of— don’t want to feel like I’m dressing up. I’m not trying to be someone I’m not. I think that’s important, if you’re going to get up in front of a lot of people and make promises.”

TJ had smiled at her sadly and said, “I think you should have what you want. You’ve worked pretty hard for it.”

So now Chloe sits awkwardly on a little stool in front of a large gilt-framed mirror, because the suite that the resort gave her to get ready in is too big and too fancy, designed for someone with a lot of confidence. Her mom would be comfortable in this suite, but Chloe feels small and nervous.

“…he _walks_ the peacock on a _leash?_ ” TJ’s saying incredulously.

“Apparently he’s a Berkeley fixture. From the Sixties, or something. I don’t know if it’s still the same peacock? I don’t know how long peacocks live. I _really_ wanted to invite him to the wedding, just so he’d bring the peacock, but Matt said he might be a secret murderer. Matt’s very suspicious.”

“To be fair, Berkeley sounds pretty suspicious of Matt.”

“Most of my friends seem to think he’s just waiting for an excuse to shoot them. They don’t know we shoot things _together_ , but only at the rifle range.” Chloe frowns at her reflection. “I don’t think I realized that freckle was going to show above the neckline. _Is_ it even a freckle? It’s, like, a _mole_. Do you think it’ll stand out in the photos?”

“Stop worrying,” TJ says. “You look beautiful. Everything looks beautiful. I was surprised; I didn’t think you’d go with such a traditional dress.”

Chloe looks down at the dress’s satin skirt. “I like tradition,” she says. “I mean— we were already doing something as traditional as marriage. Most of my friends from school think _that’s_ outdated. They think I’m doing it for my mom. But I, um. I think that when you’ve had a pretty strange life, you want to feel connected to— something? To— I don’t know what. Other people. Other people in the world. I—“ Her breath catches unexpectedly. “I talked to _him_ about it once. About getting married. Oh— oh, fuck; I knew— I knew I should’ve waited to do my makeup—”

Because now she’s crying, of course.

TJ stops twisting strands of her hair with ribbon and rests both hands on her shoulders. She says softly, “We can do it again.”

“I told him I wanted to try to do something normal, even if it was hard work. That I wanted to try getting married. Being— being human. Which seems stupid now; I mean, I’m in grad school, I’ve got a car, I’m renting a house, I’ve got a _life;_ Colonel Young wants to give me a piano, a fucking _piano_ , why does he want to give me a piano?”

She chokes out a laugh through her tears, and when she looks in the mirror, she sees that TJ is also crying a little.

“But so much of the time I still walk down the street and I feel like I’m not sure if I even belong here, or— or who the _I_ is that could belong here. Because it’s not the same person who left. And it’s such a huge responsibility, to have to decide who you are from the ground up— who you’re going to be, in every way that counts— and it’s scary, and most of the time I don’t like it. Other people don’t have to do it. It doesn’t seem fair.”

“No,” TJ whispers. She’s looking away, and Chloe thinks she’s thinking of Colonel Young. “No, it doesn’t.”

“But I think I make it harder on myself, because sometimes it feels like I don’t have the right to be like everyone else. Like I’m the strangest person in the world, so I’m not allowed to like ice cream or Beyoncé. That’s what they think in the infirmary at Travis AFB. That I’m the strangest person in the world, so how could I have a wedding. A wedding with a white wedding dress and a cake. How could I fall in love. You know? Really— really that’s the question. How could I ever find someone strange enough to fall in love with me.”

“Matt’s not strange,” TJ says, with a wisp of a smile.

“No.” Chloe laughs again. She wipes at her eyes. “He’s really, really not. But that’s— you see what I mean? He is now, more, a little, because how could he not be, but in the end maybe I had to learn to let myself think— I’m allowed to want him. I’m allowed to want all of this. Otherwise I’m just— _agreeing_ with them that there’s something _wrong_ with me. That _they’re_ the ones who’re normal. And fuck them. _Fuck_ them.”

TJ’s hands tighten on her shoulders. “Fuck them,” she agrees.

“Oh, God, I shouldn’t swear so much. I always feel like— I always feel like he’s _listening,”_ Chloe says, and she’d stopped crying, but now she’s crying again, even though she’s also laughing. “ _And_ my Dad. Probably both of them.”

“It’s probably the only issue that could unite their warring factions. _Chloe, don’t swear!_ ”

Chloe laughs until she feels half-sick with it, and God, God, the happiness is such a relief.

When she glances in the mirror, she sees her mascara’s run badly. She’s got raccoon eyes. She pulls a rueful face. “I’m a disaster,” she says.

TJ flicks her on the head. “No. We’ll just take it off and start all over. Don’t worry; we’ve got time.”

“I know; they gave me this schedule, but they put in so much time! What do they think I’m going to _do?_ ”

“Exactly what you’re doing,” TJ says, clasping her shoulder hard. “You’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to do.”

* * *

And later she thinks that TJ’s right, when she exits the bedroom and does an uncharacteristic twirl in front of her family, feeling hot in the cheeks from how happy she is; when she takes some quick snapshot photos holding her bouquet, which is based on the flowers that the Ancients exchanged to celebrate their weddings; when she catches sight of Colonel Young, leaning against the wall in the corner, looking handsome in his dress uniform, and sees that his eyes are wet.

“Come here, kiddo,” he says, when she approaches him, and he wraps an arm around her roughly, careful of her makeup. “He’d be so proud of you,” he whispers. “Me too.”

“You’re not allowed to make me cry,” Chloe says unsteadily. “I already did all my crying. I can’t make TJ do my makeup again.”

He laughs at that.

She pulls back to look at him. He’s such a curious mix of himself right now. Long-haired, his dark curls looping wildly; wearing square-rimmed glasses, but neatly shaved; thin and somehow nervous, though the uniform renders him straight-shouldered. The warm sound of his laugh is all himself, but not the crooked slant of his grin.

Though: who is she to judge who he is and isn’t?

“You clean up nice,” she says, gesturing to his medals.

“Not as nice as you,” he says.

She shows him the bouquet. “Like the Ancients,” she says. “Or as close as I could get. There wasn’t that much in the database.”

Colonel Young touches the flowers with the tip of a finger. “Lilies for fidelity,” he murmurs. “Hyacinths for change.”

“I thought: for _transformation_. It seemed appropriate.”

“Yes,” he says. “It is.”

“We’ve all changed a lot, haven’t we?” she says softly.

His face flinches. “Well, you know what the Ancients would say. It is what it is.”

“Is it, though? Really?”

Colonel Young tilts his head, looking quizzical. “Isn’t it?”

“Lately I think it is what we make of it. Or— what it makes itself. Either way. It doesn’t stay what it is. Nothing does.”

He meets her eyes. “No,” he says quietly, after a moment. “I suppose you’re right.”

“I usually am,” Chloe says. “I keep trying to tell Matt.”

She can hear the music starting in the garden: the arrangement of Bach’s “Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen” for pianist, trumpet, and solo voice. It’s a very joyful piece of music. And there are no violins in it. She didn’t want something that might make people sad. She made the right choice, she thinks. She’s smiling as he folds his arm and presents it to her.

“Are you ready?” he says, and she looks at him, both of him.

“Yes,” she says. “Yes. I think I am.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Somnievam quod is guitos essed. En stelocod opscurod fuevam et me envuenievadque ad Fatod me capievad._   
>  _Em defuevam._   
>  _Quisque diem._
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> I dreamed he was alive. I was in a dark place and he found me and brought me back to Destiny.  
> I miss him.  
> Every day.


	73. Chapter 73

The sun was beginning to get low in the sky by the time Young had danced the requisite dance with Chloe, a little haltingly because of his injured leg. She had leant her head against his shoulder as they were dancing. He’d been able to smell the antique sweetness of the roses that TJ had woven into her hair.

“I feel like he’s here with us,” Chloe had murmured. “He’s not gone. I really believe that. Someday he’ll come back.” “Chloe—“ Young had said, and shut his eyes and sighed. “Shh,” she’d said. He’d held her against him. “Across the Universe” had been playing over the sound system. After a while, Scott had asked TJ to dance, and gradually others had joined in.

Afterwards, Young stole away from the reception, not staying to see Scott and Chloe cut the cake. It was too much, _too much_ ; he remembered Gloria crushing sponge and buttercream into his face, kissing him through the crumbs till they were both smeared and sticky and laughing; her father’s disapproving look, which they hadn’t minded; the way they’d stumbled out into the street, a light London rain gathering on his boutonniere in beads and staining the silk of Gloria’s dress, and he had to _stop_ thinking of this, the cab ride, the airport, their hotel in Italy, because Gloria spoke Italian and she’d said, Darling, we’ve _got_ to put some color in your cheeks.

He downed the rest of his glass of champagne abruptly, swallowing hard.

He’d taken off his tie and torn open the collar of his uniform shirt. No doubt he looked like the irreparable wreck of a person that the crew of Destiny saw when they looked at him, an impression he read in the sudden silence that marked each encounter. Perhaps they didn’t know what to say, or more likely, to whom they would be saying it. But fuck them, _fuck_ them; they’d had a quick holiday sojourn on the other side of the universe, and then they’d come back to their lives on Earth. They didn’t know the first thing about who he was or wasn’t, and what might drive a person to become, which was to say _un_ become, because really becoming was always at the same time an unbecoming, so perhaps to become you always had to hate yourself a bit, or have _pain_ at least, an untapped energy resource, a black oil under the surface, a fuel, and in his case had it even been under the surface, had he ever bothered burying it, as Rush had said to do? As though he could ever have buried it, and: Fuck you, he thought tiredly. Fuck you. As though he was ever going to be able to bury it.

He gazed out over the sea, to where the thinning light was starting to turn the top of the water a very light blue.

Nearby there was a wide staircase leading in two flights to the shoreline, split and turned gray by years of salt. Young limped down it, feeling the wood creak beneath him, and sat on the bottom step, lighting a cigarette and taking his shoes and socks off. He dug his feet into the sand and watched the low waves turn to white as they rolled in from the vast body of the Pacific.

Music drifted to him from the reception above— a Smiths song, he thought. He had never listened to a song by the Smiths, but at the same time he had owned their whole discography and listened to them religiously, so of course he recognized the bass line, overlaid by bursts of laughter, as faint and far away as birds.

It had been a good wedding. He was happy for Chloe. Really.

He took a drag off his cigarette.

“I hear those things’ll kill you,” Rush said.

Young glanced at him.

Rush was leaning against the railing of the staircase, staring out at the water. The sleeves of his crisp white shirt were rolled up, his jeans crookedly cuffed above his bare ankles, as though to avoid the unpredictable edge of the surf. He might have been out for a casual walk on the beach at sunset.

“Yes, well,” Young said. “Somehow I doubt they’ll get there first.”

Rush’s mouth turned down. “No,” he whispered. “I suppose they wouldn’t.”

For a moment they were silent, watching the sea work with slow patience at the slope of the sand.

“Go ahead and say what you’ve got to say,” Young said at last.

“And what’s that, then?” Rush asked.

“I assume this little visitation’s for a reason.”

“I have to say, you don’t seem very surprised.”

Young adjusted his cigarette so he could count off on his fingers. “ _One,_ ” he said. “You’re not very convincing. You could at least have put a little more effort into it.”

Rush flinched and looked down. His hair obscured his face for a moment, before he raked it back with an unsteady hand.

“ _Two,_ ” Young said. “Outright hallucination lacks any real force when one’s been on the brink of losing one’s mind for the best part of a year.”

Rush said quietly, “I suppose that’s also true.”

He toed the loose sand at the base of the stair, not looking at Young.

After a while, he said, “In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that I’m not an hallucination.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Young said. He felt tired. “You really expect me to believe he’d ever, _ever_  show up here?”

“What,” Rush said with a painful half-smile, “on the beach?”

“Here. _Here._ ” Young gestured sharply in a way that encompassed the whole fucking world, the whole fucking existential plane. “Even if he wasn’t dead, which he _is_?"

"He's not—"

"He is. He _is._ And even if he wasn't, he didn’t give a fuck. He’s not coming back. All he cared about was fucking off to his fantastic new plane of existence, and he was willing to do anything and any _one_ it took to get there, as long as he could throw them away afterwards. Just fucking toss them through the gate.”

“That’s not true,” Rush whispered. He hunched his shoulders.

“Bullshit. _Bullshit_.”

“Everett—“

“ _Don’t_ ,” Young snapped, suddenly furious. “Don’t you fucking say my name."

Slowly, Rush closed his mouth.

"He chucked me through the fucking gate," Young said, his raw voice shaking, "like a battery he’d drained in his little quest to live forever. I was unconscious in hospital for a _week_ before my mind could put itself back to-fucking-gether, and that’s in the most _limited, nominal_ sense of the word, because there is _no such thing_ as _my mind_ anymore, and I had to get up and walk out of there, and every day felt like dying, because I _was_ dying, because that’s what it _means_ to be unmade. I went to fucking Atlantis, and where was he?“

The words cracked in his throat.

“Where _was_ he? In the hospital? When I got _shot_ , and I wanted to _die_ , and it was _still_ less painful than anything happening inside my _own fucking head_ ; when I ripped my fucking mind apart to find the last trace of someone who didn’t think I was good enough to even— because I couldn’t live without someone who could so _obviously, demonstrably, evidently_ live without me? It was a year, a fucking _year_ , a _year of dying,_ so where was he? _Where was he?_ ”

“Everett,” Rush said again, anguished.

“No. _No_. You know what I remember about him? My own, _my own_ memories of him, not this fucking echo, this superfluous embodiment I’m living? I remember staying in bed with him for _two solid days_ while the AI hooked him back up to the ship, making sure he didn’t even have a fucking _nightmare,_ waking up every three fucking hours so he wouldn’t be afraid, so he’d know where he was, so that he’d have someone with him, even if I couldn’t be with him in his head. Because I couldn’t stand for him to be scared. I couldn’t stand for him to be hurt.”

Rush abruptly pushed himself away from the stair and walked a few paces out towards the tideline, bringing his hands up to cover his face. When he turned back his eyes were blurred.

“And you want me to believe he gave a fuck?” Young said. “No. _That_ is giving a fuck. _That’s_ what it looks like. He had a _year_ to give a fuck. He had a _year_ to show up for even _five minutes_ , when I was  _hurt_ , when I was scared, when I was fucked-up. So _where was he? Where was he?”_

Rush exhaled a long, shuddering breath and didn’t say anything.

Foam crept up the shoreline.

Far out over the bay, a pair of seabirds were tussling, white-winged, in the pale gold air.

“Hypothetically,” Rush whispered unsteadily, “I suppose perhaps he hadn’t fully realized how much difficulty would be created by the hybrid nature of his being. Perhaps he was unable to retake physical form, as the human body was incompatible with the processing capacity that his memories of Destiny required. Perhaps the hierarchies that govern the multiverse were not terribly happy about their inability to categorize him as properly human, machine, or Ancient. Perhaps they refused to allow him to interact with this plane. Hypothetically.”

Slowly he walked back and took a seat on the stair beside Young. The weathered board shifted under his weight.

“Perhaps he watched,” he said in a barely-there voice, “everything you endured. Unable to stand it. But unable to intervene. Unsure if you would still be alive when— if— he was ever allowed to do so. Terribly, terribly afraid that you wouldn’t be. Not knowing—“ His breath hitched. Even that barely-there voice was wavering, collapsing. “What he would do if you weren’t. How he would live after that. Because he did. He did give a fuck. And he never—“

He shoved his hands up under his glasses and pressed the heels of them into his eyes.

“Hypothetically,” he said thickly, at last. “In answer to your question. If I were to guess. That’s where he was.”

Young looked at him in silence for a long time without speaking. The sea wind was twisting Rush's fine, untidy hair into elflocks. The setting sun glinted off the frames of his glasses. His bare forearms were dusted with sand.

“Why?” Young said. “Why did you do it?”

Rush jerked his hands down in a violent motion. “Because I didn’t know if I was going to _survive_. And I wanted you to live, even if I didn’t. And if I did— if I did, and you were—“ His voice was starting to split again. “Do you want me to admit that it was selfish?”

“Yes,” Young said.

“Then: yes. It was. Yes. _Yes._ But surely— surely you can understand that. Surely _you_ can.”

Young looked down. His cigarette was burning itself to ash between his fingers. He stubbed it out on the corner of the step.

“I didn’t mean for you to end up like this,” Rush said, sounding wretched. “I’m so sorry. I told you to bury it. Everything of me that was left.”

“How could you ever think,” Young said in a low voice, “that I would do that? That there was a world in which I’d let any part of you go?”

“I underestimated how stubborn you were,” Rush said softly.

“No,” Young said. “That wasn’t what you underestimated.”

He glanced up and their eyes met.

For a long time they looked at each other.

Young reached out in a sudden, jerky movement and touched Rush’s face.

Maybe he hadn't wholly believed it was Rush, in spite of the evidence presented; maybe some part of him resisted, insisted on doubt, screamed that it would not survive if this turned out to be some kind of deception, one last, cruel trick of his disintegrating mind; maybe that was why he was startled in that first moment when his questioning fingertips met Rush’s soft, familiar skin. He found himself sucking in a shaky breath, and Rush blinked, his eyes wide and uncertain and oddly vulnerable, and then held still while Young, as though in a trance, moved his hands across his features, cataloguing them according to some secret survey map he had held all this time inside of him; and Rush had done this, Young remembered, after returning from the planet; when he was sure of nothing, when he could not feel Young in his head, he had put his hands to Young’s face as though feeling for confirmation that, yes, this was the man he knew, this was the man he knew above all others, this was the man who alone he allowed to know him out of all men. And it had been. It was.

"Nick," Young whispered, gazing at him.

“Hello," Rush said, wobbly-voiced, managing a wan smile.

"I can't feel you. Why can't I feel you?"

Inside of his head, he meant.

"You're keeping me out. And your mind is damaged. I can't fix it unless you let me in."

"But I'm not blocking," Young said.

“There’s— I suppose it’s mostly scar tissue from when we— from when—“ Rush faltered.

“Right,” Young said quietly. His hands stilled against Rush’s face.

“And some of it is what you’ve walled off. Other places I’ve hurt you.”

“Everywhere,” Young said. "Everywhere."

“Yes.” Rush shut his eyes. “Everywhere.”

Young leaned forward until their foreheads were touching. He could feel Rush exhale, breath faint and damp and shaky. Vaguely he was surprised that their physical bodies hadn’t simply blurred together, when there ought to be no boundaries between them, when they should have slipped into each other’s skin; and he couldn’t stand that they hadn’t; he couldn’t _stand_ this point of separation. _T_ _hat_ was the part that hurt.

"I don't know how to let you in," he managed to choke out, feeling that he was barely holding back some sea of emotion. "I don't know how anymore; I don't remember; you have to show me; I can't—“

“Shh—“ Rush whispered. “Just let me—“

But Young found that he could not wait even for Rush to finish his sentence. The seawall inside him had at last broken, and he cut Rush off by kissing him.

Rush made a desperate sound and pushed forward into the kiss, almost unbalancing Young and sending him sprawling into the sand, but getting ahold of him at the last second, and then gripping him anywhere, everywhere that he could put his hands; he raked his fingers through Young’s hair, grabbing tight fistfuls of curls, then digging into Young’s shoulders hard enough to leave bruises; and he tasted of salt, and he was warm, and possibly one of them was crying, and something huge and volatile and not without hurt was happening in Young’s head, solid ground splitting as though the earth itself were anxious, mutable, electric, but it was Rush, and he had forgotten what it was like to have Rush in his head, Rush who was crackling and bright and hard to look at, Rush who was barbed and tempestuous and seemed to use up all the air, and Young breathed against Rush’s mouth, staggered, almost unable to voice the sentiment, “Oh, my God; oh, my God, I missed you,” and it was _Rush_ who was crying, and Rush didn’t bother to form words, or couldn’t, maybe; he just sent a flood of emotion rushing through Young, all the parts of him singing out in aching and elated recognition, all the fast vibrating little threads.

Then he was moving through the rooms of Young’s mental house like a quicksilver restorationist, dusting off the chunks of rubble and fitting them back into place, seeming always to know just where they went, holding each one as though it formed part of a fresco that was fragile, and damaged, and unbelievably precious, and there was such a note of distress in him as he worked that Young murmured, “What? What is it?” and Rush said unsteadily, “It’s _you_ , you idiot,” and kept kissing him, so that Young couldn’t really protest.

It _was_ Young. And _Young_ was Young, more and more as Rush went on, growing still and slower and sturdier somehow. He said hazily at one point, “I want the math. And the chess,” and then, when Rush made an ambivalent noise, “It’s _my_ mind. You can take playing the piano, if it makes you feel better.”

“Philistine,” Rush said, but Young could feel his faint smile.

Long after Young could sense that Rush was finished, they went on kissing, something in their minds echoing the wild hushed exultation of the way the nearby waves crashed, the spill of light from the lowering sun, muted yet searing, so that the whole world seemed only a reflection of what they shared between them.

Eventually Rush broke away, only to lay his head against Young’s shoulder.

“How do you feel?” he whispered.

Young stroked his hair absently and considered. “More like me,” he said. “Less like you.”

“You _look_ like me. I don’t like it.”

“No?”

“Well—“ Rush caught hold of some stray curls. “I don’t mind _this_ bit. But I like you when you look like you.”

Young rolled his eyes. “I’ll get right on that. Maybe give me the weekend.”

Rush was conspicuously silent.

Young felt a twinge of dread. “What?”

“I told you I can’t descend,” Rush said in a low voice. “That it’s not possible for me to have a physical body.”

“But you have a physical body now,” Young said. His arm tightened across Rush’s back.

“It’s a physical form, yes, but it’s— temporary. I converted energy into matter to make it. It’s not, classically speaking, _real_.”

Young’s arm tightened even more. “What does that mean?”

“It means—" Rush said. “It means you have a choice to make. But before you do— I have to— there’s something you should know.”

His shoulders had gone stiff. He pushed his face into Young’s neck, breathing unsteadily there for a long moment, like a deep-sea diver gathering in air before plunging back into the suffocating ocean. Then he seemed to force himself upright, shaking Young’s arm off of him.

His face was set. “You didn’t ask,” he said, looking away. “You didn’t ask which— whether I'm—“

“No,” Young said.

Rush bit his lip. There was something miserable in his face. “You should know,” he said.

“I do know,” Young said.

“No. No.” Rush shook his head. “You—“

“Nick,” Young said gently. “I know.”

There was nothing that Rush could really hide from him anymore.

He had thought that this would make Rush happy, but instead his expression seemed to collapse. “I compressed the AI as much as I could,” he whispered. “If that makes a difference. We tried. I’m almost him. I _am_. But— not quite.”

Young looked at him for a long time. Finally he reached out to straighten the collar of Rush’s shirt, smoothing the points down. “What’s the choice?” he asked.

He had a feeling he knew what it was. He had a feeling that this had always been the choice.

Rush hugged his arms across his chest. “Your mind is— undamaged now. It should stay that way. You can go back to your life. To _your_ life, I mean. Or even as a maths consultant, I suppose, if you like. You could—“ He hesitated. “Perhaps you could go back to Atlantis. I’m not sure if you still speak Ancient, but— if you wanted a chance to—”

“ _Et quod elios optios est?_ ” Young asked.

Rush was staring down at the pale sand heaped around the stairway. “The other option is to come with me. To leave this plane. Ascend.”

Young nodded slowly.

After a moment he stood. He shrugged off his uniform jacket and slung it over his shoulder. The evening air was cool against his skin. He glanced out over the peaceful sea, to where the sun was approaching the horizon. The whole world seemed washed in watercolor blues and reds.

Rush hadn’t looked up. “You don’t have to—“ he said, sounding pained. “You don’t have to decide right now; I know I’m not— but— if you think there’s any, any chance that you might want—“

“Let’s go,” Young said.

“What?” Rush’s head jerked up. He squinted at Young, looking confused.

“ _Eamos_. Or, I mean, we can stay for the sunset if you want, but that one’s totally up to you.”

“But you can’t come back,” Rush said uncertainly. “Perhaps I wasn’t quite clear. It would mean giving up the rest of your life.”

“The rest of my life,” Young said. He huffed out something that wasn’t quite a laugh. “And?”

“And—“ Rush’s gaze slid away. “I’m not what you wanted. Not really.”

Young held out a hand to him.

Rush stared at it.

“Well?” Young said.

Rush didn’t say anything.

“Normally I’d say I’m not going to stand here all day,” Young said, “but in this case, I think that would give the wrong impression. Let me be totally clear.” He took a breath. “I will absolutely stand here all day, all night, every day and every night, for however long it takes you, a higher being and supposed genius, to realize that there is nothing I would not do to be with you. There is no line I wouldn’t cross; there is no wall I wouldn’t break down; there is no rule or regulation I wouldn’t flout; I would fucking tear across branes if I had to, to be with you, because—“

His mouth worked for a moment without producing any sound. “Because,” he managed raggedly at last, “I can’t be me without you. I’m half a person. Not half of myself; half of who I am with you. Half of whoever— whatever— we make together. And maybe that’s something, I don’t know, not-human, something new, but that’s fine, I guess; I won’t be human, then, because I can be anything but separate from you.”

Rush was gazing at him as though faintly dumbstruck.

Young’s throat was tight. “You’re it for me,” he said. “ _You_ are. You think I don't know what it means to change? How I could possibly _not know?_  After all this? I know. I know you. And you're _it_.I told you that before. I told you I didn’t know what that meant. I still don’t. But I want to find out.”

Rush was blinking rapidly. He ducked his head and took a long breath.

“Yes, well,” he said hoarsely, after a pause. “There’s no need to get sentimental.”

“Fuck you,” Young said, but he was smiling.

Rush reached out and took Young’s hand. He let Young pull him to his feet.

As he did so, the heavy light of the setting sun glinted off something at his throat. The collar of his shirt was unbuttoned, and Young laid his hand just inside it, against the cool line of the cheap metal chain.

“I meant to send them back to you,” Rush murmured. “But in the end I— couldn’t. They’re not the originals, in the strictest sense, but then I suppose that was never really the point.”

“No,” Young said softly.

They stood looking at each other.

A burst of laughter high above them caught Young’s attention, and he glanced up to where paper lanterns were beginning to be lit along the edge of the terrace. The reception was still going strong. Music was playing that Young didn’t recognize. Someone had knocked one of the flower arrangements off onto the hillside, and lilies and hyacinths lay scattered amongst the sea scrub.

When he looked back, he saw that Rush wore a slightly wistful expression.

“You can say goodbye to them, if you want,” Rush said.

Young said, realizing, “But _you_ can’t.”

Rush shook his head haltingly. “I can only interact with you.”

Young frowned. “Why? I mean, why me? Aren’t you supposed to not interact with _anyone?_ Aren't you not allowed to ascend people?”

Rush didn’t answer for a moment. He had laced his fingers in Young’s fingers. His thumb was brushing along the edge of Young’s hand.

“You understand that I was never going to be exactly popular,” he said, “amongst the ranks of the ascended. They tend to be a rather staid and stately bunch, very interested in rules: rule-setting, rule-keeping, rule-enforcing, debating rules and punishing those who transgress. I, on the other hand…” He shrugged.

“I can see how that would be a problem.”

“Yes. The general opinion is and was that I am, by nature, an inveterate transgressor, as well as a— how did you put it?— a fucking ontological complication.”

Young winced.

Rush darted a wry glance up at him. “No, I liked it. And it’s true. I am. Part human, part Ancient, part starship— 100% pain in their arse—“

“Now, why doesn’t _that_ surprise me.”

“But I also argued, from the moment I arrived there, on the legitimacy of another ontological complication— which, as you can imagine, was extremely annoying for them. I went on making that same argument, at varyingly hysterical pitches, for the best part of a year. Unceasingly. I suppose that I wore them out as much as I won, in the end.”

“Yes. I remember your argumentative style.” Young paused. “What was the argument?”

Rush shrugged. He was staring fixedly down at where he was digging a bare toe into the sand. “Oh, you know,” he said. “Something about being half a person. How I could be anything but separate from you.”

Young studied him, his throat aching. “I love you,” he said softly. “You know that, right?”

Rush tightened his hand in Young’s. He said with difficulty, still not looking at Young, "I believe it's been strongly implied. And you know that I— that it’s— reciprocated.”

“Yes,” Young whispered.

“Good.” Rush cleared his throat. “Now that we,” he said, not quite steadily. “Now that we’ve done the requisite emotional heavy-lifting, if you want to say goodbye—“

“If you think I’m letting you out of my sight,” Young said, smiling faintly, “even for a second, after all this, you’re crazy.”

“The accusation’s often been made.” But Rush frowned. “Not even to Chloe?”

“I’ve got a better idea. Do you happen to see a good-sized hunk of driftwood around here?”

Young cupped his hand over his eyes and searched the beach until he spotted a piece that would work. He dragged Rush towards it, across the rocky, kelp-strewn shore.

“God, you’re incorrigibly showy, aren’t you?” Rush said, when he realized Young's plan.

“Says the man who blew up a starship by flying it into a multiversal collision,” Young said. He started carving a letter into the sand. “I can’t imagine you’ve suddenly become the retiring type. Wait, _have_ you? What exactly do you do all day, on this so-called higher plane?”

“Mostly, argue about _you_ ,” Rush said. “And how integral you are to my continued existence. I’m thinking of going on holiday, though.”

“Yeah? What’s the ascended version of Hawaii like?”

“Not a clue,” Rush said. “Warm, I hope. I suppose we’ll find out.”

Young was making his way across the beach with the driftwood, raking more letters into the sand as he went. After a while, he stepped back and surveyed his handiwork. Across the slope of the beach, furthest from the tide-mark, he’d written, in words several feet high:

 _CHLOE— REGTA FUEVAS_  
_TE AMAMOS. WALHE._

“There,” he said, dusting his hands off. “That should do it.”

Rush studied the words. “Was it a good wedding?” he asked softly.

Young rested a hand on his shoulder. “Yeah,” he said gently. “It was wonderful. You would have liked it. I think she’s going to be all right.”

“Of course she will be,” Rush whispered. “She has so much to look forward to.”

Young said quietly, "So do we."

Rush leaned against him for a moment without speaking. “I’m not used to that idea,” he said. “But that was how I did it, you know.”

“How you—“

“Ascended. It wasn’t really about resignation. I wanted so much to be a part of the world. In spite of everything that had happened. Even knowing that you might not want me. That I might have destroyed the part of me you could want.”

Young closed his eyes and tightened his hand on Rush's shoulder.

“There was still so much potential,” Rush said. His voice was distant, reflective. “Even at the end. That was what I’d never understood. I learned that from you, I suppose. You were so unexpected. I hadn’t thought there was anything left in me that could still—“

“Grow,” Young whispered.

“Yes.” Rush fell silent. “I didn’t want that. And then— I did want it. Very badly. Not to continue on as I had been; not to just keep not-dying, but only ever by the skin of my fucking teeth; not to raze myself to the ground and start from ash. I wanted more than that. I wanted to be all that I am and _more_.”

He had started glowing very faintly, almost imperceptible in the failing light.

“Nick,” Young said. “You’re—”

Rush turned to face him. He offered his hands, palm up, for Young to take. “I’ll help you,” he said. “But that’s what you should think of. How much potential is in you. How much potential is in everything. We’re all just energy, part of an infinitely changeable landscape. At once objects and events, unfolding constantly, never still, never holding onto the past, but emerging from it. Generative. Moving forwards.”

Young could feel Rush in his mind, in his body, drawing Young’s attention to all that he had ever been: the self that Rush had rebuilt so many times from wreckage, the self whose fragments he’d held in his hands with such love. The gawky boy who’d been quiet and quick to lash out, who’d insisted on going hunting, and cried when he made a kill. The soldier who’d wanted his messmates to touch him, but interpreted it as a hunger for affection; who’d married and felt that something was missing, but thought it was missing from himself. The adulterer, the aggressor, the disgraced commander; the furious, lonely, wounded figure who’d left Rush for dead. The half of _them_ who’d hung from an out-of-phase rock face; the man who, without knowing why, had made space for Rush in his bed, who’d taken Rush’s glasses off his sleeping face and felt a surge of tenderness, who’d kissed him ferociously, who’d made love to him, who’d built their shared selves into a cabin that kept expanding and expanding, ever-larger and ever more full.

“Yes,” Rush murmured. “That’s a good way to think about it.”

The man who’d destroyed that cabin in the grip of a despair that seemed endless; the man who’d almost destroyed _himself_ so many times: out of a desire for the daughter he’d lost and the neat stable world she represented, which he would have given anything to want; out of a desire for a form of being he feared he’d lost forever, in which he was two rather than a torn-apart one; out of all his unfulfillable desires, and the absence of the ones that were expected; ultimately, out of an absence of the desire to live, when life seemed to offer nothing that could replace his losses, when he felt he had been torn out at the root. Who at the last, at the very last, discovered that there was so much more to want.

“I didn’t know,” Young whispered. His own hands had started glowing where his palms were touching Rush’s upraised palms. He could feel the transformation under his skin. 

“I think that’s the nature of the thing,” Rush said. He smiled, a soft, crooked smile that Young wanted to kiss.

The boundaries of their bodies were starting to blur, as though they were not bodies at all, but bright shadows without any definite edges, reflected briefly through the falling dusk. Young was aware of the salt in the air, the dark waves crashing, the far-off lanterns, the sea wrack, the lilies and the hyacinths, Rush’s mouth gentle against his own when Young leaned in to kiss him, and _Yes,_ he thought, _yes, I want this world; I want it._ He could feel Rush echoing the sentiment. And at last they stepped into each other and were themselves entirely, the light of their visible bodies fading, as they thought: _And the world to come._

* * *

“Chloe! Chloe, come look!” someone called on the terrace.

Down on the beach, the only sign that someone had been there was the brief message inscribed in the sand, and two sets of footprints that proceeded side by side before converging— as though those who’d left them had found in themselves an unanticipated endpoint, or else, exasperated with the slow pace of solid ground, had together devised a way to walk into the air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Et quod elios optios est?_ = And what's the other option?  
>  _Eamos._ = Let's go.  
>  _CHLOE— REGTA FUEVAS. TE AMAMOS. WALHE._ = Chloe— You were right. We love you. Be well.


	74. Epilogue

Young was watching a multitude of Chloes practice scales  
on the Bechstein piano across a variety of possible realities,  
while simultaneously observing the permutation-rich invention  
a football-like game by a quadripedal species on an industrializing  
world somewhere in the Andromeda Galaxy, a game that Rush found  
extremely tedious and irritating, but for which Young had very high hopes.

Rush was being a cloud of dust around a meteoroid  
traveling at 40 kmh through interplanetary space, and  
he was exceptionally annoyed with Young, but meteor-  
oids did not really experience annoyance, which was  
ameliorating his mood somewhat, as was the potential  
of doing some violence to a chunk of ice that had strayed  
across the meteoroid’s projected course.

Young rolled his eyes, or as near as he got without actually  
having eyes as such or the ability to roll them. _Oh, what?_  
he asked. _I happen to_ like _football, especially now that I_  
_understand the underlying spatial reality and, yes, I_ am _going_  
_to keep calling it football, regardless of your objections, so_  
_let’s just put that disagreement to rest once and for all, okay?_

 _You said you would interconvert with me_ , Rush-the-cloud-  
of-dust-around-a-meteoroid said (sulkily, to Young’s ears).

_I thought you were off being space dust._

_I’m bored with it._

_You’re not. You just want to be material so I can hold you._

_No._

_Yes._

_You’re incorrect._

_You realize you can come over here any—_

_—time_ , they finished, slightly discombobulated by the  
shift, but distracted by how pleased they were that  
Chloe was learning to play Mozart's 11th piano sonata, and  
also that they had been right about the sulkiness, which made  
them feel simultaneously sulkier and smug, but they couldn’t really  
be sulky for long in what they had come to think of as  
their optimal state, or at least a state they needed to enter  
into from time to time if they didn’t want to turn cranky  
and liable to get far too interested in the activities of meteoroids  
and yes all right but it would be _more_ optimal to interconvert into  
two separate bodies and so they navigated spacetime in  
order to reach the little planet located in the Tadpole Galaxy  
about 42,000 years before the advent of man where they  
had been permitted to establish a small house that spanned  
an awful lot of dimensions

(more, Young thought, than he probably strictly  
knew about, because Rush had never quite gotten out  
of the habit of being a little bit evasive, or of assuming  
that Young didn’t know exactly what a dimension was,  
or how it worked, or any number of other things that he  
absentmindedly thought Young was stupid about, but it  
was a pretty endearing habit, actually, or at least it let  
Rush work himself up into imperious postures that Young  
found very entertaining to deflate).

Rush materialized looking unkempt and out-of-sorts, like he’d actually been hitching a ride on the meteoroid. His hair was a mess, and Young automatically reached out to smooth it down and tuck it behind his ears, which made Rush scowl at him and bat his hands away.

“It’s not my fault you can’t unentangle your subjective experience from your material reality,” Young said mildly.

“I don’t understand why you find it so easy _._ Your thinking is very fucking concrete.”

“Was that supposed to be an insult?”

“Yes.”

“Bold move to pull on a guy you’re trying to get into bed.”

Rush sidled closer and looked up at Young through his lashes, toying with the collar of Young’s black Destiny uniform. (Out of habit, Young always materialized in the same clothes.) “Are you saying it’s not going to work?”

“I’m saying,” Young said, kissing him quickly, “that I better not find out you've stashed another pocket dimension under the stairs.”

Rush looked shifty. “That statement has no logical relation to our prior conversation.”

“You’re going to get busted one of these days.”

“There’s no actual rule against it.”

“Only because they didn’t think that anyone would make a hobby out of testing various sequences of cosmological evolution in pocket dimensions,” Young said.

Rush heaved an exasperated sigh. “We’ll discuss it later,” he said, and took Young’s hand, and towed him away from the door.

They headed through the living room with its leather couch, chess table, red Navajo blanket, untidy stack of Ancient manuscripts, virtual cosmology refractionelle, temposcope, and overflow shelves from the seven-dimensional library that was located somewhere above the stairs and to the left of a vague region of unspace that Young suspected Rush had forgotten what he’d originally planned to do with; past the crowded little music room where Rush still, occasionally, played the piano, but often tested out various nonhuman instruments instead, down the hallway with its odd paintings of spindly figures, and into the bedroom whose overt Western accents were now juxtaposed strangely with the view from the window: an alien vista of dull green gaseous lakes and ice.

Rush shucked his shoes off and sprawled on the bed with a pleased sigh. “Do you think we’re too attached to material existence?” he said.

Young, unbuttoning his jacket, glanced at him. “Too attached according to whose metric?”

“Yes, well, I suppose that’s a fair point.”

“Of course it is.” Young slung his jacket over a chair and kicked off his boots. “Is there something inherently retrograde about material existence?”

Rush shrugged. “I know what the _others_ would say.”

“I would have expected that to make you _more_ attached to material existence, not less. You enjoy being contrary.”

“That is manifestly untrue.”

“Anyway, it seems silly to assign some kind of moral value to a mode of existence. Plus, there are some experiences that are _only_ accessible to material beings. Case in point.” Young climbed into the bed and pressed up against Rush, nuzzling at his neck.

Rush arched, contented. “Mm.”

“See. I knew you weren’t really bored.”

“I was,” Rush said, wrapping his arms and legs around Young like a limpet. “And I was cold.”

“You don’t get cold anymore.”

“I do. Just not physiologically.”

“So, in other words, you wanted to be held.”

Rush shot a look of disgust at him. “ _No._ ”

Young rolled his eyes, but a smile was tugging at his lips. He stroked a hand down Rush’s back and let himself relax into the large, sturdy bed. Technically, neither of them had to sleep anymore, but they liked to sleep in this bed— after sex, or simply to enjoy sleeping. Oddly, out of the two of them, it was Rush who was more attached to sleep and sex, maybe because he’d spent so long denying himself the luxury of them when he was a strictly material subject. Maybe because he was in some small part the AI, and the AI had never before been able to enjoy sleep or touch. Young didn’t have quite the same degree of ferocity or hunger. But he loved to hold Rush against him in bed, enjoying the warmth of him, the weight, the nearness. And he loved to wake to Rush’s hand clenched in his shirt, Rush’s faintly dissatisfied sleeping expression, and the damp of his slow breath against Young’s neck.

“Sentimental,” Rush murmured, picking up the thought.

“ _You’re_ sentimental.”

“No. You're incorrect. How was Chloe today?”

“She’s good. In her mainstream variations, I think she’s going to get a Fields medal.”

“Yes, of course she is.” Rush frowned against Young’s chest. “But do you think she’s happy?”

Young considered. “I think so,” he said. “That’s a hard thing to measure, isn’t it?”

“Is it?”

“I thought you’d be the first person to argue for complications.” Young turned his head slightly, looking down at Rush, and stroked Rush’s hair back so that he could see the play of expressions on his face. Rush’s dark eyes were thoughtful, his brow slightly furrowed.

“ _Unhappiness_ is a hard thing to measure,” Rush said. “It has so many disguises, and so many different degrees. Like heat or cold. Happiness is an absolute state that admits no quantification. That’s why it takes so much work to sustain. Why it’s so difficult to achieve. ”

He had rucked up Young’s t-shirt slightly on the left side, and was absently running his hand across the skin over Young’s ribs.

Young watched him for a while. “And are you happy?” he asked at last.

Rush shifted, sitting up and straddling Young’s chest. He leaned in to kiss Young, his hair forming a somewhat tangled curtain. He tasted faintly of interstellar ore and ice and dust. “Are _you_ happy?” he murmured.

One of them must have answered first. But it was impossible to say which, and there was such consonance and such completeness of emotion in their answers that for a short time there _was_ only one answer, because they were possessed of only one consciousness, and that consciousness was filled with a huge, cloud-like joy, a kind of exultation into which every other thought was subsumed.

They kissed like that for a while— clumsily, because it was not really the ideal way to kiss. Then at last, with a little regret, they went back to being two people, albeit two people who were more inclined than usual to smile at each other foolishly.

“Good,” Rush said softly.

“As if you didn’t know,” Young said. “You _are_ me.”

“Only sometimes. And not absolutely.”

“Nothing’s ever simple with us,” Young said with fond exasperation. “Is it?”

“No,” Rush said, pulling a face. “Thank God.”

And he let Young pull him down to the bed and kiss the life out of him, reckoning absently, in the warm place where the edges of their thoughts were never really separate, that, after all, there was always more and more life to be had.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me about this fic on [tumblr](http://septembriseur.tumblr.com/post/173909699989/alright-yall-indulge-me-in-allowing-me-to-pitch) or check out the the [playlist](http://septembriseur.tumblr.com/post/173933326614/in-keeping-with-the-constant-promotion-of-my-own).
> 
> I've also written a [DVD commentary for this fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14709503/chapters/33993911).
> 
> @intricateritual has written an _amazing_ piano piece called ["Epithalamium for Augusta Ada Byron"](http://septembriseur.tumblr.com/post/177361942649/intricateritual-she-knows-what-dr-rush-would) for this story!


End file.
